49 Tennyson Street
Napier, Hawke's Bay, 4110
021-139-5369
29A Hastings St, Napier 4110. 021-139-5369
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Straight From the Wishing Well -Andrea Gardner
Andrea Gardner – statement
My work explores concepts around identity, selfhood, and the psychological tension found in female experience. Through staged photography I am interested in juxtaposing the familiar with the unexpected and how artifice mixed with reality can create “truthful fictions” and unexpected narratives which might be playful, absurd, poetic, enigmatic or uncertain.
In my current photos I have inserted myself into the compositions, usually in some form of disguise using clothing, paint, glass, wigs, masks, cardboard and paper shapes, etc. Because the face is usually hidden the female figure becomes more anonymous and universal. Parts are concealed, transformed, protected. The body also becomes an abstract shape that interacts with other shapes and patterns.
My process is akin to going down a rabbit hole, a metaphor for being transported into a wonderfully strange or troubling surreal state or situation. The ambiguity in the photographs leaves room for interpretations that can be psychological, aesthetic, feminist or environmental. At times there is a theatrical and performative quality.