This is a an excerpt from an article called "Young Modern" written by Christopher Allen, talking about the National Youth Self Portrait Prize 2009 that was held at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
"...The most explicitly sexual references are in Helen Rogers's series of self-portraits with wire appendages attached to her face. Her hair is pulled back tightly and her features almost obliterated with white stage make-up; her expression is blank with undertones of anguish. The wire structures are made in the form of stylised breasts and penises, and suggest ambivalences of identity and desire. As she writes: 'I am interested in the intangible and ambiguous nature of sexuality and the assumptions of gender and sex as binary...'
It could be said that the mark of a good metaphor is it's aversion to a precise and literal relationship to meaning. This might prove difficult for an artist using nylon stockings and table tennis balls. Loaded with potential associations, Rogers' everyday materials have histories as objects of utility, but also histories as containers of metaphor. Within art, literature and film, the stocking is often treated as a fetishistic or sensual item of clothing, an item that implies a feminine sexuality. The stocking also has the ability to communicate a sense of what is hidden and revealed in the same instance. Even with this weight of association and despite these materials assuming so many casual connections to the world itself, Rogers manages to transform the everyday through the simple manipulation of two objects coupled with the clever use of exhibition space. Spanning a gap between gallery walls, Untitled takes on a physicality that is strangely animal or even alien-like. Of course this is just one of many possible readings, and the description of an allegory has none the power of the allefory it describes. Rogers intentionally witholds from defining the textual content of her materials in order to engage the participatory mind in all the ways that she can. Written by Tim Woodward
