Clare Rae is an Australian artist who is currently (as of March 2017) working as an artist in residence in Jersey. She is however, based in Melbourne and has produced most of her work in Australia. On the 22nd March I attended a talk directed by Rae, explaining her previous work, her interest in the research of Claude Cahun with the Jersey Archive and a brief overview of her intentions to produce some work inspired by her research. Her work explores ideas such as performance, movement and the representation of the female body. Her work is predominantly self portraiture where she is in motion or a clear, strong pose as a reaction to the environment she is producing work in. Rae has played with the idea of public and private spaces and how one uses their body and acts in different way according to whether or not they are in a public space. Rae has also spoken about how her work is affected by the gaze of onlookers, she generally produces her work in private, performing only for the camera. However, in a project produced in the National Gallery of Victoria in 2013, Rae was followed and watched by both a curator and a security guard which she admits, affected the  way the she performed and the movements and poses that she decided to use. Despite this Rae still produced the intriguing video art piece (still pictured below) where she climbs up and down a decanted rack, admitting that the climb was very painful.

Rae’s work is influenced and produced with an understanding of feminist theory, she explores the representation of the female body within the medium of art and photography, describing them as “objectifying” in the simplest way as a photo or piece of artwork is an object, if it depicts the form of a woman then she is, in turn, “objectified”. In Clare Rae’s earlier work from her undergraduate degree including “Desire and  the Other” (2007) displays the female body in a passive and acquiescent way, often lying on the floor with the face concealed in one way or another, either out of shot or obstructed by clothing or objects. In slightly later works such as “Climbing the walls and other actions” (2009) and “Testing” (2010) present the female body is a more active provocative way, although still often concealing the face with her notable short, dark bob. In these works Rae plays with the idea of suggested nudity through her use of tights and stockings which are translucent garments that cover but do not conceal what is under them. Tights and stockings are also garments with sexual connotations and Rae mentioned during this talk that she wanted to step away from her use of (however subtle) provocative clothing so that the focus was on the performance and movement, adding that her use of pantyhose could become a “slippery slope”.

Rae mentioned in the talk that during her research of Claude Cahun’s she was able to looks at almost every photograph she had produced that there was record of in the archive. She stated that it was fascinating to see her body age and her work develop from the work she produced as a young woman to the year before her death. Rae also spoke of how she felt that the bodies of older and aging women are not presented or explored enough in art and photography. A project that related to this belief is “20+9+5” produced during the months between October 2014 and May 2015 where Rae was pregnant. All of the images in the project where created and displayed in the Sutton Project Space in Fitzroy, Victoria. She explored how the pregnant female form is presented as well as her won feelings of being objectified during her pregnancy as she felt that she lost full ownership of her body due to the amount of people, often strangers, feeling as though they had a right to touch her. After her pregnancy, Rae went back to the space and created more using her son which show a sense of development. When the photos were displayed however, Rae positioned them in a way that made the images appear as if they were not in a chronological timeline.

I found the work of Clare Rae very visually intriguing but also incredibly interesting once I attended her talk and was able to understand her thinking behind her images and work in general. It was interesting to hear another artist talk about their work in a critical way, as Rae stated that some projects were more successful than others and also spoke of what she would do differently if she was to reproduce the work. I want to take some inspiration from Clare Rae’s work and as in my own project I am having to be myself or a version of myself in front of the camera which is something that I struggle with.