Jacqui Stockdale’s compelling photographic portraits reflect her ongoing fascination with history, mythology and identity. Her images playfully mimic the genre of exotic postcards and historical paintings where a fanciful subject is positioned within a make–believe landscape. Dressed in costumes and masks Stockdale’s characters are layered with cultural and historical references.
Stockdale’s hand-painted landscapes form the backdrops to the works. The striking combination of photography and painting in a single image is a recurring element in Stockdale’s practice and reflects her capacity to embrace and work skilfully across a range of mediums.
The Boho draws on the nineteenth century Australian folk narrative surrounding the popular larrikin and anti-hero Ned Kelly. They combine Jacqui’s fascination with Australian colonial folklore, masquerade and talisman. The life size portraits depict living subjects - including Paul Kelly and Missy Higgins, in front of iconic ‘Kelly country’ landscapes, such as String Bark Creek and Power’s Lookout in the King Valley in rural Victoria.
At once playful and deadly serious, Stockdale’s work is bold and intelligent seamlessly balancing risk and restraint.
BIOGRAPHY
Jacqui Stockdale is highly regarded for her practice as a painter, drawer and photographer and has been recognised in major awards, prizes and institutional exhibitions. Stockdale won the Doug Moran Contemporary Photography Prize 2012 and is a past winner of the Belle Arti - Chapman and Bailey Art Award and the Hutchins Art Prize. She has been a finalist in awards including the National Self Portrait Prize, Geelong Contemporary Art Prize, Arthur Guy Memorial Prize, Olive Cotton Award for Excellence in Photographic Portraiture, Paul Guest Drawing Prize, and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Prize. A documentary about Stockdale’s practice, Heart, won ‘Best Documentary’ at the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival. In 2014 Stockdale undertook a three month residency in Barcelona as the recipient of an Australia Council Residency.
Stockdale’s work is held in major institutional collections both in Australia and internationally including the National Gallery of Australia, Newcastle Art Gallery, Benalla Art Gallery, Albury Regional Gallery, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Artbank, and Watermill Foundation Collection, USA.
Her work is regularly curated into significant exhibitions - most recently in All Masquerade! at the Museum Villa Rot in Germany alongside artists of the calibre of Yinka Shonibare, and in Living Rooms at The Louvre in Paris, curated by Robert Wilson. In Australia, her work is currently in the Adelaide Biennial: Magic Object on at the Art Gallery of South Australia, her solo exhibition Drawing the Labyrinth is touring regionally and in September she will have a major survey exhibition at Benalla Art Gallery.
Press release courtesy THIS IS NO FANTASY.
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