– as part of the ISelf Collection display of The end of Love at Whitechapel Gallery.
I didn’t know of this series at all, I see it first from the side that opens into the photographs and the letter, I turn round and see the painting of the letter writer, only then do I read the name of the artists and move back and forth.
The presentation is really fascinating with the angled and hinged wooden panel, inside some photos and a hand-written letter of the aspiring model, the airbrushed painting on the other side. In this article she talks about the search to find someone who actually does airbrushing with paint rather than on the computer and how she turned to sci-fi illustration to find someone to do it. But also about the gap, the distance between aspiration, the image to aspire to and the situation.
I like how in the painting the model is confident in her airbrushed beauty; she looks out at us, the world. The airbrushing has an interesting effect: it doesn’t seem sexualised, needy, seeking but present and confident. That Wearing mentions how she turned to sci-fi illustration to find someone able to airbrush with paint (rather than on the computer) is possibly relevant. The description notes also mention (without detailing how) that Wearing and the model collaborated on the final image. I am intrigued how Wearing addresses this thematic without sneering, without exposing the aspiring model but instead standing beside her to expose the subject matter but not the person.
The photos below document my initial approach to the work plus a copy of the letter that was available in the gallery.
— along with the Fiona Banner’s Standing Nude, there is much in this concerning gaze, a female gaze, agency but also means in which traditional nude painting as well as glamour shots and poses are appropriated, reworked, possibly subverted, turned into some else.
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