http://www.jerwoodvisualarts.org/writing-and-media/matthew-finn-joanna-piotrowska-and-tereza-zelenkova-in-conversation-with-martin-barnes/
Sure way of looking at photographic practice
No Identity crisis
Not about photography in a state of flux in the digital flux
Complete command to medium
Use it deftly
Work is B+W
Echoes of the past in the present
Gestures
Tereza:
Nostalgia for a past sensitivity
Photography = equal status as art and document. Reality and fiction.
Real history, local legend and complete fiction
Somehow document place of home
Thinking – nostalgia for a former sensitivity
Joanna
- Different ways of using the body to deal with mental problems
- Process orientated psychology
- (Anorexia as a way of dealing)
- Family tensions and issues – work on the family
- How the family can be oppressive, not only enriching our lives but can be limiting. How it can negatively affect our identity. Limit freedom.
- Family images
- Meet family, restaging postures from old family photographs
- Using different movements and gestures – family consolation therapy. Biggest impact on work
Psychology and female sexuality, body and gesture.
Self defence manuals, body language.
Inspiration
Idea of the body as a weapon
Using the body for defending oneself from another human being
Carol Gilligan – In a different voice
Martin Barnes: ‘To much information and I’ll switch off’
Gift here is that narrative not obvious
- Ref Lynne Ramsay
Psychological / emotional relationship with family
Body
Joanna:
Viewer conscious of their own bodies in the space
Sculptural approach
Encounter things again and again
Repetition of image
Images inescapable in particular dreams
Experimental installation
Installation – Claus trophic for viewer – Sound intrusive
I think a lot about how it will be perceived
Installation is a piece in itself
Not so common in photography – Installation is important
I see photography ore as object than images in some sense
Bring forward:
- Look up self defence manuals
- Look up fashion manuals, how to be a girl now
- Small power shifts
- RESTAGING
- MANUALS
- Sexual how to’s.
- Body + psychology. Gestures. How the body shows the mental
- Men as value attributor through attention
Intimacy
Hands
Touching
Human relationships and behaviours
Documentary of a performance
Situation of the camera with people
- Ref German Pavilion
Fulfilment of seeing something that is the visualization of your thoughts
A mould, an instruction. A way of being. Staged and set V the messy chaos of the lone girl outside it
As opposed to the loss of the singular girl shifting through it
Men as a value base. Way of judging oneself
http://www.calvertjournal.com/features/show/5119/tereza-zelenkova-joanna-piotrowska-photography-jerwood-photoworks-awards
‘In Piotrowska’s work the violence is not tied to any particular events but instead alludes more generally to the physical and structural violence enacted against women. The Polish artists’ project depicts young women in domestic environments, holding various postures taken from self-defence manuals.
As in the widely acclaimed earlier series Frowst (2014), unconscious psychological dynamics are examined within a pervasive atmosphere of intangible threat: there is a haunting sense of anxiety, an airless discomfort in the domestic sphere.
Piotrowska's work is inspired in part by the writings of feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan, who argues that between the particularly vulnerable ages of 11 and 17, girls learn to suppress elements of an inner self; in doing so, they lose a part of themselves. This loss occurs to fit the demands of patriarchal society and a culture dominated by values associated with masculinity. Piotrowska’s project is no lament, however: there is a strength in their uneasily fluctuating gestures. If there is an artistic precedent, it is Polish performance and photographic artist Zofia Kulik’s images of female bodies that combine the vulnerable with the militaristic. ’
