Facial gash: The troubling self-portraiture of Meg Porteous
Facial gash: The troubling self-portraiture of Meg Porteous
Photographs by Meg Porteous
Essay by Mark Amery for The Spinoff, 29 April 2020
In the age of the selfie and mundane domestic photography recontextualised for social media, Auckland artist Meg Porteous’s work speaks strongly to the politics of representation. Art editor Mark Amery shares words and images with Porteous across bubbles, via screens, in advance of her show at the Auckland Virtual Art Fair from this Thursday.
Meg Porteous, Self-Portrait (the spectator), 2019. Inkjet Print, 570 X 810mm. Ed 2 + 1AP
I was struck by the way so many images in your debut at Hopkinson Mossman ricocheted off each other at interesting new angles. This one [‘Self-Portrait (the spectator)’, above] particularly struck me as a gateway to the exhibition. For me it spoke of a ambiguous socially-distanced perspective born of apartment living – a dark domestic voyeurism with me since Hitchcock’s Rear Window.
I live in a central Auckland city apartment on the fourth floor. This image was taken from the perspective of my window outlook onto the street. I guess with apartment living, your world is slightly more compressed as far as being around people is concerned. The view out my window is a way for me to watch and see people on the street.
With this image I was thinking about more conventional modes of documentary ‘street’ photography, where a power dynamic is at play. The photographer in a position of power photographing its subjects. I wanted to confuse this logic by subjecting myself to the gaze of the camera. I made the image by running around the block as my brother photographed me from my bedroom window. The running from the camera applies this melodramatic narrative of escaping the camera’s gaze. It is a self-portrait, but one where I am both the subject and the spectator.
Meg Porteous, Self-portrait (The Dilemma) 2019. Inkjet print, 594 X 841mm. Ed 3 + 1AP