Major Cindy Sherman exhibition at City Gallery

Cindy Sherman
City Gallery, Wellington
Until March 19

Cindy Sherman could be considered  the patron saint of the selfie generation. As a photographer, she has been producing images of herself since the late 1970s. She uses herself as the model to look at notions of female identity by mimicking and parodying the images of women in films, advertising, the media, fashion and the studio portrait

Her show at City Gallery provides an overview of her work covering the past 15 years with several major series – “Headshots,” “Clowns,” “Chanel,” “Society Portraits” and “New Works”

All the portraits in her “Headshots” series are listed as “untitled” probably because giving the works names or titles would make things too obvious, give the viewer a way into the works. By making the works untitled there is a requirement on the viewer to make up titles, provide some sort of back story and make some assessments of the personality or occupation of the person she has created.

The characters include anxious divas, ageing hippies, and fading Hollywood stars. Many of them look like people we know, neighbours or relatives providing a mix of the familiar and weird.

With most of these works it is possible to see Cindy Sherman but she is overlaid with makeup, wigs, prosthetic additions and costumes, like divas or criminals attempting to disguise themselves or nonentities trying to give themselves a personality.

Her “Clown” series was a response to the 9/11 attacks in New York and they are an attempt to create characters whose aggressive happiness disguises a sadness and sense of alienation. They also connect with the scary clowns of Hollywood movies such as Poltergeist, the Childs Play series and Batman. In most of them, the artist appears to disappear under the weight of makeup and prostheses.

There is the “Chanel” series where she has dressed up in Chanel creations designed by Coco Chanel as well as more recent Karl Lagerfeld designs. Dressed in these elaborate costumes, she has set herself against dramatic landscapes, which provide a strange disconnect between the stylish costumes and the bleak landscapes recalling the Romantic works of 19th-century artists.

The “Society Portraits” series is an extension of the Chanel works depicting a woman of a certain age with the accoutrements of a social class.

In “New Works," she has returned to the themes of some of her earlier work based on Hollywood movie stars.

As [part of the exhibition the gallery will be showing films that relate to Sherman’s work and the notions of disguise and identity. These include Georges Franju’s Les Yeux sans Visage, Sam Fullers Naked Kiss and Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre.