Webster is a photographer and visual artist. Her work explores society's accepted boundaries and the human psyche, specifically relating to gender and identity. In the early eighties women photographers like Christine Webster took up a post modern position creating images as opposed to making a documentary record of the world around them. In doing this they introduced a more conceptual and theatrical approach that would previously been considered unthinkable.[2] Webster started using her own body and that of friends to act out the characters in her work. A friend, and professional magician, Tim Woon[3] appears as an over eager corporate suit, briefcase and alarm clock at the ready. In another image the briefcase opens to a magician’s flash of fire. Later dancer and choreographer Douglas Wright would appear in many of Webster’s photographs in many different guises. As Bridget Sullivan pointed out in the catalogue for the group show alter / image, by using a reference to ‘glossy up market advertising stills’, Webster manages to’ upset ideas of male control and gravity’.[4]
Working in series
Almost from the beginning of her career as an art photographer Webster tended to work in series presenting groups of photographs as a cohesive collection. These series have included:
1980s
New Myths. These early works often featured Webster herself, both as subject and photographer. Anna Smith writing about this series described them as, “not so much daring or prurient, as jubilatory, flaming with life.”[5]
1989
Tiananmen Square. Webster created the series, responding to the 1989 student-led pro-democracy protests and killings in China.[6]
1991
The Players
1991-1998
Black Carnival While resident as the 1991 Frances Hodgkins Fellow in Dunedin Webster began visualising what would become one of her major series Black Carnival. When complete it would be a sequence of sixty images. Using models Webster challenged norms of the day by exploring ideas around feminism and gender roles, the shiny surfaces of the photographs incorporating the viewers into a personal conversation with the content via their mirrored image.[7] The works were inspired by ancient wall paintings like those of the Villa of the Mysteries in Rome, Webster creating her own ‘frieze of human abandonment and decadence.’[8] In 1993 the Dunedin Public Art Gallery commissioned a 49 sheet version of Black Carnival that is now in the gallery’s collection and one of the largest photographic installations in the country.[9] The series features a number of naked figures did not pass unnoticed. As writer Ewan McDonald commented, the exhibition contained content and ambiguities “ we often dare not admit to…”[10] An example is the naked photograph of the cabaret artist Mika who stands straight on and stares directly into the camera.[11] At nearly two and a half meters high the impact as noted by art writer Erin Harrington, ‘demands attention.’[12] When Black Carnival (including the Mika portrait) toured to Hamilton a city councillor, Russ Rimmington, called the exhibition pornographic and called for its closure. “I’ve got a mind as broad as a Roman sewer, but this is just sleaze – it’s worse than pornographic magazines like Playboy or Cleo.[13] the exhibition went on with all works included.[14]
1996
Circus of Angels. A collaboration between Webster and choreographer and dancer Douglas Wright who is the model in all the photos. Webster had already worked with Wright previously on his dance Buried Venus.’ [15] In a prescient interview recorded before their meeting and collaboration Wright described an image that could only come from Webster’s studio, ‘I feel there has to be the image of a woman, or else something that is neither man nor woman. We need something that is mysterious and layered and rich. It needs to read well from a distance.”[16]
Other series include Doll’s House (2000), Quiet (2013) and Therapies[17] (2014).
Selected Exhibitions
Webster has shown at a number of dealer galleries over the years including : Red Metro, Artis, Southern Cross, Real Pictures, Sue Crockford and Trish Clark Galleries. The following annotated list represents a selection of Webster’s solo and group exhibitions in public art galleries and museums.
1982
Christine Webster: Large Colour Photographs Wellington City Art Gallery (toured) Art writer Sheridan Keith reviewing the exhibition for Art New Zealand, mentioned how much she admired Webster’s use of colour as an integral part of the work adding, “Hers is a romantic and unusual vision, concerned with the transitory elements of existence.“[18]
1984
Christine Webster : New Photographs Bowen galleries toured to Robert McDougall Gallery. Critic John Hurrell commented on the ‘stimulating’ and ‘provocative’ nature of the work noting their ‘theatrical’ quality.[19]
New Women ArtistsGovett-Brewster Art Gallery. Webster’s photographs continue to be seen as an antidote to the documentary focus of most New Zealand photographers at the time. Art writer Priscilla Pitts sees it as, ‘cutting right across the grain of the documentary genre…’[20]
1985
Fresh Art Robert McDougall (group) Curated by Brad Smith.[21]
Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in New Zealand Photography Wellington City Art Gallery. (group) Curated by Gregory Burke. In reviewing the exhibition critic Ian Wedde said of Webster’s work, ‘Christine Webster poses herself in sexual dramas that approach but then deflect the clichés of pornography and dominance.’[24][25]
1991
The Players: a Photo series by Christine Webster Centre for Contemporary Art, Hamilton. As curator and art writer Anne Kirker noted, Webster, used her models to create ‘subjective states of being’ allowing them to present human conditions that were true of both sexes, a form of ‘masquerade and disguise’ exploring possibilities of sexuality.[26]
Headlands: Thinking Through New Zealand Art (group) Webster showed alongside other women artists including Margaret Dawson, Megan Jenkinson, Fiona Pardington and Marie Shannon all of whom, as curator Robert Leonard commented in the catalogue, ‘play with the woman-as-object-paradigm in order to disperse the self in myriad disguises.’[28]
1993
Black Carnival Dunedin Public Art Gallery (toured)
alter / image City Gallery Wellington (group) [29]
Open the Shutter: Auckland Photographers Now Auckland Museum. (group) Curated by Ron Browsen for PhotoForum celebrated PhotoForum’s twenty-first anniversary.[30]
1995
Currency: Contemporary Photographic Art Auckland War Memorial Museum. (group) Curated by Peter Turner.[30]
Provocations Christchurch Art Gallery. This survey of Webster’s work curated by Anne Kirker presented many of her photographic series.[32] Before the exhibition opened the gallery removed a video work from the exhibition because of potential audience complaints.[33]
^Barton, Christina; Lawler-Dormer, Deborah; Wellington City Art Gallery (Wellington, N.Z.); Auckland City Art Gallery, eds. (1993). Alter/image: feminism and representation in New Zealand art, 1973-1993. Wellington, N.Z. : Auckland, N.Z: City Gallery, Wellington, Wellington City Council; Auckland City Art Gallery, Auckland City Council. p. 57. ISBN978-0-908818-14-3.
^Smith, Anna (Winter 2010). "Dead Can't Dance: The Provocations of Christine Webster". Art New Zealand (134).
^Notman, Robyn; Cullen, Lynda (2009). Beloved: works from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery [exhibition, Dunedin public art gallery, 12 December 2009 - October 2011]. Dunedin, N.Z: Dunedin Public Art Gallery. pp. 228–229. ISBN978-0-908910-58-8.
^McDonald, Ewan (Spring 1993). "Process, Procession, Possession: Christine Webster's Black Carnival". Art New Zealand (68).
^Hurrell, John (8 August 1984). "'Tribal' photographs". The Press (Christchurch). p. 23.
^Pitts, Pricilla (Spring 1984). "New Women Artists at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery". Art New Zealand (32).
^"Art's new attitude". The Press (Christchurch). 26 June 1985. p. 20.
^Content / Context, Wellington 1986. National Art Gallery. 1986. pp. 100–101.
^Airey, Mavis (20 September 1989). "Ancient beliefs inspire symbolic paintings". The Press (Christchurch). p. 23.
^Wedde, Ian (14 December 1989). "Imposing Narratives". Evening Post.
^Aberhart, Laurence; Burke, Gregory; Wellington City Art Gallery, eds. (1989). Imposing Narratives: Beyond the Documentary in Recent New Zealand Photography; Laurence Aberhart ...; [publ. to accompany the exhibition ... Wellington City Art Gallery, 26 November 1989 - 22 January 1990]. Wellington. ISBN978-0-908818-07-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Kirker, Anne (1993). New Zealand women artists a survey of 150 years. East Roseville, NSW, Australia: Craftsman House. ISBN978-976-8097-30-9.
^Whiting, Cliff; Murphy, Bernice; McCormack, John; Sotheran, Cheryll, eds. (1992). Headlands: Thinking through New Zealand Art. Sydney: The Museum of contemporary Art [u.a.] p. 48. ISBN978-1-875632-04-6.
^ abSeja, Nina (2014). PhotoForum at 40: counterculture, clusters, and debate in New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Rim Books. pp. 159. 164. ISBN978-0-473-28325-4.
