A prescient photographer

The inspiration for today’s blogpost comes from the weekly email by Tony Ellwood AM titled: ‘Capturing a moment in time’. In this message, the Director of the NGV highlights some of the photographers who are part of the NGV collection.

Anne Zahalka (b. 1957) is a Sydney-based Australian photographer who has 12 works in the NGV collection. Her practice extends over 35 years and Zahalka has exhibited both nationally and internationally with her photographs included in major public collections in Australia.

In the comprehensive website ‘Zahalkaworld’ one can only marvel at the breadth and depth of her photographic output. The homepage provides a brief introduction that describes her practice: ‘[Zahalka’s] work has often explored cultural stereotyping and has challenged these with a humorous and critical voice. She deconstructs familiar images and re-presents them to allow other figures and stories to be told that reflect on cultural diversity, gender and difference within Australian society’.

In her earliest series from 1983, ‘The Landscape Re-presented’, Zahalka looked at representations of the Australian landscape by painters who had grappled with national identity and mythology. She then re-imagined these works in a contemporary setting. Taking works by the Australian Impressionists, Zahalka addressed changes in the Australian cultural mix in the 20th century. An example is the utilisation of Frederick McCubbin’s ‘The Pioneer’ (1904) to draw parallels with post World War 2 migrants settling in the countryside.  While ‘The immigrants #2’ is featured on the NGV Education insights webpage, unfortunately this photograph does not seem to be part of the NGV collection.

Without examining her many series in detail, what struck me was how Zahalka’s photography over time could be used today to describe our experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To begin, her series ‘Open House’ from 1995 exposes the private interiors of Zahalka’s social milieu, examining the relationships and living situations of the occupants through the small rituals performed within daily life. In our current social isolation, most of us have become increasingly aware of our living situation and, through zoom and skype, aware of the domestic worlds of friends, colleagues and any number of ‘talking heads’ that populate our screens.

 As Jason Smith (now Director of the Geelong Art Gallery pointed out in his essay ‘Unhomely’ in 1998) ‘Zahalka’s subjects are captured in moments of social interaction, private meditation or daily ritual… The scenes are familiar and open the private domain to public… It is this public examination of the everyday, the tensions, intimacies and desires played out within the home, paradoxically, the absolute normality of the setting, that instills in Zahalka’s images a sense of the uncanny or unhomely – a sense of lurking unease within what appears familiar’. Perhaps this is something we all need to consider when we often hastily and unthinkingly share our intimate spaces with others.

In ‘Resemblance’ from 1987 Zahalka’s work drew on the aesthetic conventions of seventeenth century Dutch genre painting, utilizing the formal elements of their compositions, while reinvesting them with references to contemporary life. In looking at these works, I am reminded of how our contemporary situation has created a number of ‘roles’ which give a sense of purpose and routine to allow us to manage the different experience of time we currently have. Positions like The cook (how often is sourdough displayed on social media as part of isobaking?), The cleaner, The reader or The musician (another reminder of the proliferation of virtually enacted single and communal musical endeavours) are familiar to us all as we maintain or construct ‘coronavirus identities’ on social media.

The other work in this series which resonates with today is ‘The marriage of convenience’. This early re-interpretation of Jan Van Eyck’s ‘The Arnolfini Portrait’ from 1434 is perhaps one of the first serious examples of what has become a ‘coronavirus dress-up challenge’ initiated by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and subsequently taken up by the NGV, for us to create our own versions of famous works of art in our own homes.

Zahalka’s series, ‘Leisureland’ from 1999 depicts images of modern leisure that is no longer available to us. Mass gatherings both outdoors (‘Woodchop stadium’) and indoors (‘Star City Casino’) are now ‘memorials’ to when we could gather together in large groups without concern. The shared experience of direct and immediate enjoyment is clearly keenly sought and will not take place for the foreseeable future. The televised images of footballers and other athletes playing to empty stadiums without the reciprocity between player and spectator is disconcerting and demoralising.  When we are able to next watch sport, or attend galleries, or concerts, or theatres, the experience will be different, and the spectre of contagion will hover as we try to recapture our past carefree enjoyment.

The desire to be ‘out and about’ connects with Zahalka’s series ‘Bondi, Playground of the Pacific’ from 1989. In this series, Zahalka imagined and parodied the local beach culture by exploring cultural stereotypes and their depiction in iconic artworks like Charles Meere’s ‘Australian beach pattern’ 1940 in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Max Dupain’s ‘Sunbaker’ 1937.  Bondi was an early COVID hot spot and also the site of the flouting of social distancing directions which resulted in the closing down of the beach and considerable political and social disapproval. Zahalka’s photo ‘The bathers’, with its tableau of beachgoers enjoying their time in the sun, highlights the lack of willingness to be apart from friends and family as part of a common communal experience. If only mindful beachgoers had adopted the social distancing seen in ‘The surfers’, things might have been different.

In ‘Hotel Suite’, 2008 Zahalka’s photographs address the seemingly benign and ordinary moments experienced within the four walls of a hotel room. Juxtaposed against these interior spaces are breathtaking views of the city. With the return of travellers from overseas and the requirement to undertake fourteen days of hotel quarantine these benign moments take on a new significance. Hotel rooms are usually short-term transitional spaces occupied for holidays or business. In our current world, they have become places of involuntary incarceration – we see people trapped for both their protection and ours. The ‘quarantined’ are under surveillance and experience a variety of emotions including relief, gratitude, curiosity, alienation, desire, frustration, boredom, distress, panic and forbearance.

Zahalka’s most recent series, ‘Wild Life, Australia’ 2019 features examples of habitat displays and dioramas that are commonly seen in natural history museums. These objects have a didactic function and display pristine environments, frozen in time and devoid of man-made issues. In this series, Zahalka digitally inserts traces of reality into this idealised, optimistic imagery, which challenges the original narrative and reflects on the changing relationship that exists between people and the natural world. ‘Fruit Bat, Nepean River, Sydney Region of New South Wales’ is a reminder that our current predicament has almost certainly come about as a zoonotic transmission with a pathogen shifting from bats to humans quite possibly due to climate changes driven by humans. It serves as a reminder that if and when the pandemic is under control, there will continue to be issues of our relationship with the environment which will require further thought and action.

I will conclude with one of Zahalka’s works that is hanging in my home. The work is ‘Santa’s Kingdom Christmas Tunnel, Fox Studios’ 2004 from the ‘Natural Wonders’ series. In this work we become part of a group of spectators who are dazzled, mesmerised and overawed by the glittering environment we find ourselves in. It is hard to know where to look or what to focus on – perhaps like a magical and enticing version of our current world. Anne Zahalka came to our house to help install the photograph and in discussion she said that the fabricator who prints her works wanted to photoshop out the small prosaic ‘exit’ sign that can be seen in the distance in the middle of the photograph. The ‘exit’ sign is as integral to the image as a way out from today’s chaos is essential for us all.

For me, the hallmark of a great artist is someone who creates work that talks to us across time and which continues to offer up new and fascinating meanings.  Anne Zahalka is one such artist. More about this artist can be found at: https://zahalkaworld.com.au/?gallery=natural-wonders