Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

Rudneva-Mackay Publication

AA
View Discussion
The cover of the Layla Rudneva-Mackay publication, Green with Envy, designed by Warren Olds

As for the writing in this book, it is really disappointing. It seems devised to avoid dealing directly with the photography. The discussion is about everything but Rudneva-Mackay's art - as if the subject were an embarrassment or an obscenity, preferring to discuss ornithology or drawing or other irrelevancies. It's a shame because her photographic work is so rich; it cries out for some articulated conversation, some elucidated thought that zeros in on its details and methods.

Layla Rudneva-Mackay
Green with Envy
Essays by Gwynneth Porter, Jon Bywater, Sean O’Reilly, Layla Rudneva -MacKay, and Selene Forester.
Editor: Gwynneth Porter
Design: Warren Olds
Coloured illustrations, 124 pp
Published by Starkwhite and Clouds, 2012

In this beautifully designed softcover book - a treat to hold and open - we can see the variety of photograph Layla Rudneva-Mckay specialises in: standing figures in a landscape that are hidden behind held-up towels or sheets; leaning bodies covered with hooded garments and covered limbs; posed clothed models with the skin of their limbs or faces hidden behind coloured make up; buildings photographed at night with no eternal illumination; children’s dwellings or forts in sitting rooms made with cushions or stacked or upended furniture.

They are all very strange and amusing - akin to the improvised ‘pencil’ photographs of Paul Cullen or Erwin Wurm’s images of bodies and objects. They are a pleasure to think about - mysterious, eccentric and funny. Lots of conceptual angles.

As for the writing in this book, it is really disappointing. It seems devised to avoid dealing directly with the photography. The discussion is about everything but Rudneva-Mackay’s art - as if the subject were an embarrassment or an obscenity, preferring to discuss ornithology or drawing or other irrelevancies. It’s a shame because her photographic work is so rich; it cries out for some articulated conversation, some elucidated thought that zeros in on its details and methods.

Looking at the five writers, the closest thing to being useful is the book’s title which references colour that symbolises personality types, and Jonathan Bywater’s essay which partially describes a divided landscape (forked river, split rocks) as an allegory for biculturalism. The irrelevent texts are a wasted opportunity.

Here are a few of the images. The prevalent theme seems to be that of the hidden, or the blocking off of visual access to the ‘natural’, raw or ‘uncooked’. Plus they allude to a wide range of other topics including privacy, childhood, domesticity, shelter, Shakespearean theatre, human epidermis, race and physiognomy.

I think there are heaps of writers who could comment brilliantly on these images, so it is a shame the editor hasn’t sought out some good ones for commissioning, for with appropriate and focussed writing this could have been a really valuable publication. Still it’s great to see fifty of Rudneva-Mackay’s highly stimulating images together in a book. That at least allows us to think about them en masse at leisure.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Jae Hoon Lee, Mother and Child, 2024, inkjet on smooth pearl. 1500 x 1500 mm

Looking Through (or At) Jae Hoon Lee

IVAN ANTHONY GALLERY

Auckland

 

Jae Hoon Lee
Internal Landscape Part II


16 March 2024 -13 April 2024

JH
Outside installation of part of Shiraz Sadikeen's The Natural Rate, at Treadler. Photo: Alex North.

Sadikeen @ Treadler

TREADLER

Auckland


Shiraz Sadikeen
The Natural Rate


8 March 2024 - 23 March 2024

 

JH
Still from Marcus Coates, The Directors: Lucy (2022) Single channel HD video on loop, projection, 21 min, 24 sec--⁠presented at Yellow Brick Road, courtesy of Artangel.

Attempting to Describe the Experience of Psychosis

Te Tuhi /Auckland Arts Festival

5 inner city sites


Marcus Coates
The Directors


24 February - 24 March 2024

JH
Ava Seymour, Manhole, 2023, Maribu solvent screen-printing ink on aluminium, 1120 x 910 mm, unique.

Maternal Appurtenances

COASTAL SIGNS

Auckland

 

Ava Seymour
Heels of Mothers


14 March - 13 April 2024