Selina Wallace, Perfectly Imperfect (Lasso), 2018-19, C-type photograph on silver halide lustre paper, 76.2cm (w) x 50.8cm (h)
January 15 – February 7, 2020
Opening event:
Friday, January 17, 6-8pm
Artists talk:
Sunday, February 2, 2pm
Please join us in The Exhibition Space for Perfectly Imperfect, a solo exhibition by Adelaide based photographer Selina Wallace.
Perfectly Imperfect is a photographic series which seeks to document the tension between conventional cultural constructs and the lived experience of gender roles. Placing herself within the image, Selina performs her ‘femininity’ and ‘domesticity’ in unconventional ways. Against the backdrop of the Australian natural and urban landscape, Selina poses with discarded domestic objects that she has found on the side of the road. The cord from a vacuum cleaner becomes a lasso, an iron is transformed into a necklace (or maybe something more sinister).
‘Domestic implements connote housework, and in turn; women’s work. Subverting the viewer’s expectations via the use of performance and humour are critical elements of Perfectly Imperfect. The detritus of abandoned household objects discovered on suburban footpaths drives me to make images outside of accepted norms. Travelling to remote parts of Australia, I do not need the domestic items I carry, but they are a reminder of the societal expectations that weigh me down.
Cultural constructs can be escaped, and through my performance in Perfectly Imperfect I seek to do just that, with the aim of brief personal liberation from constraint.’
Artist biography
Selina Wallace is a female Australian photographic artist. Her photography explores the relationship between women and culture, and how we are influenced by the world around us. Wallace is studying a Bachelor of Photography through Open College of the Arts, University of Creative Arts, Yorkshire, UK.
Her work State of the Environment was exhibited in South Australian Living Artists in 2015. She was the inaugural winner of the Don Dunstan Foundation Award for artists whose work explores themes of equity, the environment, homelessness, mental health and unemployment. In 2019, Perfectly Imperfect was exhibited at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale Open Program.