Fox, S., Scott-Bray, R., Foster, A., Thorneycroft, D., Baturin, J., Huber, D., Jacobson, B., Farrell & Parkin, 2000.
'Sensing Death- The Chiaroscuro Of Touch in The Mortuary Photography Of Sue Fox' By Sue Fox & Dr. Rebecca Scott-Bray
| Output Type: | Conference paper |
| Presented at: | 'Death, Dysfunction & the Olympic Ideal' Conference alongside an exhibition. |
| Venue: | ACP. Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia |
| Dates: | 8/9/2000 - 8/9/2000 |
Set against the background of the Sydney Olympics and taking a radical and provocative alternative approach to physical extremity, this one-day symposium will explore the challenging issues raised by the works of seven artists showing at the ACP exhibition 'The Liminal Body'. With an International cross-disciplinary panel of speakers, subjects addressed will range from Rabelais' Gargaanthua to post-mortem health neuroses: from the mortician's slab to the priest's altar; from the visceral to the virtual. The day will be divided into three parts:- malady and viscerality; dissolution and spirituality; phantasm and virtuality. Speakers are Dr. Kit Messaham-Muir, Jon Baturin, Dieter Huber, Diana Thorneycroft, Victoria Ryan, Michael Wardell, Rebecca Bray, Kirk Hoffman, Alasdair Foster and live internet links with Sue Fox & Farrell & Parkin.
"This talk engages with the mortuary photography of British artist Sue Fox. Fox's images melt flashes of death and fragments of texture into a language for viewing death that is resonant with the artist's meditation and Buddhist faith. How long is our dying? How deep is our life? What questions are posed by the flesh: of the viewer, of the dead body? Moving these bodies into gallery spaces, and therefore public consideration, Sue Fox presents the viewer with an accumulation of decompositions. Here, photography releases the image as a chant, as the artist states "of what is, what was ... a song".