Christine Webster's research activity

More information on: A Serious Doll's House - Quiet - Le Dossier - Blindfield
Le Dossier III image 6


Webster's work confronts sexuality, gender and the social construction of the female body. In doing so she aims to deconstruct gender stereotypes and challenge societal expectation. This is done by exploring the politics of the male gaze and the necessity of the female gaze and investigating the complex ways in which human communities control and maintain the 'others' who fall outside the status quo. She examines how individuals: men and women, are viewed and explore human vulnerability through documented performative event for the camera.

Feminist visual artists can best demonstrate discourses surrounding gender, sexual identity and power relations through photography and film. Emphasizing filmic and theatrical elements, women artists use props and performers to stage events which borrowed from the world of advertising and pornography.
 
Photo from 'Blindfield'

Webster works in the context of theoretical texts and artistic practice. An important starting point for her was Laura Mulvey's influential text about the structuring of the heterosexual male gaze 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' (1975).

Responding to the critical discourse on the gaze Webster questions the role of voyeur, investigating the politics of the female gaze and examining the role of desire.

Cindy Sherman (USA) and Julie Rrap (Australia) have critiqued and disassembled stereotypes and gender, as Webster does, however Webster's work uses sexuality and memory to speak about desire, vulnerability, and human psychology. Where Sherman and Rrap reference painting, Webster's work comes from performance and the theatre.




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