Senior Lecturer, Photography


Room: Rus 001

Email: christine.webster@anglia.ac.uk

Telephone: 0845 196 2350
International: +44 1223 363271 ext 2350

Christine Webster's research activity pages

Born in Pukekohe, New Zealand, Christine Webster studied photography and drama at Massey and Victoria Universities and Wellington Polytechnic, New Zealand. Most recently she completed her MFA at Glasgow School of Art. Webster has lived and exhibited in Barcelona, Hong Kong and Paris. Her work has been shown in Australia, Germany, Scotland, USA and throughout New Zealand. Webster has lived and exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Spain and France. Her work has been shown in Germany, Holland, USA and Britain.

Webster produces large-scale images focusing on the human body and psyche. Her use of high gloss print surfaces adds a hyper-reality and veneer which is both seductive and unsettling. Often dealing with role play, ambiguous ritual and psychological game-playing Webster explores the codes of representation and the mechanism of the gaze.

In a recent body of work, Fugue 2004, Webster draws upon a repertoire of 'poses' from painted representations of Christ, questioning our preconceptions and placing the unfamiliar into the familiar.

Numerous solo and group exhibitions include Show Me To The Tradesman's Entrance, Tramway, and 6th Street Level Open, Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, 2004; Black Carnival, shown at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles and MACBA, Barcelona, El Dolor Exquisit shown at Galerie Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona, New Acquisitions shown at LA County Museum, all in 1997; Out of the Void: Mad and Bad Women shown at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane in 1995; Persona Cognita, shown at Museum of Modern Art at Heidi, Melbourne, and Can Can, shown at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, both in 1994; Possession & Mirth, shown at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney in 1993; Neue Mythen, shown at Cambridge Darkroom and Museum Ludwig, Cologne in 1989.

Her work has featured in several exhibition catalogues including Quiet, Adam Art Gallery, Show Me To The Tradesman's Entrance, Tramway, Glasgow, both in Wellington, 2004, The Mask & the Mirror, MACBA, Barcelona, 1997, Persona Cognita, MOMA at Heidi, 1994, Imposing Narratives, City Gallery, Wellington, 1989, and in the film and book, Pleasures and Dangers, Moet et Chandon Art Foundation and Longman Paul, Auckland, 1992, and in the book, 20th Century Photography - The Collection of Museum Ludwig, Taschen, 1996.

Webster has been awarded three QEII Arts Council grants, the Frances Hodgkins Fellowship, and been the recipient of several grants from Creative New Zealand.

Coming to the UK in 1997, she is now based in Cambridge where she lives and works.

(Photograph reproduced by kind permission of the New Zealand Sunday Star Times.)

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