Anne Zahalka
(Australia 1957– )
- Title
- The bathers, from the series Bondi: playground of the Pacific
- Year
- 1989
printed 1990 - Media category
- Photograph
- Materials used
- type C photograph
- Dimensions
-
72.4 x 83.5cm sight; 76.2 x 87.2cm frame
- Signature & date
- Signed l.r. verso frame, ink "A Zahalka". Dated l.l. verso frame, ink "...1990" and l.r. verso frame, ink "...1989".
- Credit
- Hallmark Cards Australian Photography Collection Fund 1990
- Accession number
- 96.1990
- Copyright
- © Anne Zahalka. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney
- Location
- Not on display
- Further information
‘I am primarily concerned with … representations to do with place, identity and culture. Through the appropriation and reworking of familiar icons and styles I seek to question (and understand) their influence, meaning and value…. The series ‘Bondi: playground of the Pacific’ evolved from a six month residency at the Bondi pavilion. The project looked at Bondi’s status as a significant cultural site and questioned the dominant representations that mythologise and embody it.’ Anne Zahalka 1995 1
Anne Zahalka, in her tableaux, forces the viewer to question what is being looked at. Zahalka did this by taking familiar images from the media and from the history of Australian art and remaking them in ways which reflect the diversity of contemporary life rather than received notions. In her series ‘Bondi: playground of the Pacific’ Zahalka uses a painted background of a beach, against which she places and plays with the icons of Australian beach culture: the surfers are Japanese; Max Dupain’s sunbather becomes a pale skinny redhead; and the modern ‘bathing beauty’ reclining on the sand is reading Marcel Proust, ‘immersed in a completely different place to the one where she lies’. 2
Anne Zahalka was educated in Sydney at East Sydney Technical College and Sydney College of the Arts. She graduated MFA from the University of NSW in 1994. She has received several fellowships and awards including Kunstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin 1986
1. Letter to Anne Kirker 26 July 1995 printed in Kirker, A. & Williamson, C. 1996, ‘The power to move: aspects of Australian photography’, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane p 32
2. Correspondence with Judy Annear (AGNSW), 16 August 2005© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007
- Bibliography (5)
-
Judy Annear (Australia), Points of view: Australian photography 1985-95, 2005. no catalogue numbers
Merryn Gates (Australia) (Author), Anita Callaway (Author), Strike a pose: Hunter art.1 art tourist 2004, Lake Macquarie, 2004, 9 (colour illus.), 13-14. Note: the AGNSW did not lend this print to the exhibition
Robert McFarlane (Australia, b.1942) (Author), Critic's Choice, Sydney, 1994. no catalogue numbers
Sandra Byron (Australia) (Author), Isobel Crombie (Australia) (Author), Twenty contemporary Australian photographers - from the Hallmark Cards Australian Photographic Collection, Melbourne, 1990, 34 (colour illus.), 51.
Art Gallery of New South Wales (Australia, estab. 1874) (Author), Great gifts, great patrons: an exhibition celebrating private patronage of the Gallery, Sydney, 1994. no catalogue numbers
- Exhibition history (4)
-
Critic's Choice, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 22 Apr 1994–10 Jul 1994.
Great gifts, great patrons, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 17 Aug 1994–19 Oct 1994.
Points of view: Australian photography 1985-95, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 19 Nov 2005–29 Jan 2006.
Anne Zahalka, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 14 Mar 2007–02 May 2007.
