The model's revenge no.1

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

This arresting self-portrait photograph was taken by contemporary artist Alexis Hunter at the age of twenty-four. In 1972, shortly after finishing her fine arts degree at the University of Auckland, Hunter relocated to London, where she became an active member of the women’s art movement. Claiming that ‘it was too hard to be a feminist artist on your own; the criticism was too great to bear’, Hunter joined the Artists’ Union Women’s Workshop and the London Women’s Liberation Art Group.1

In 1974, when this work was created, Hunter was on the cusp of abandoning painting for photography, a medium she felt better represented her ideas and her interest in feminist and conceptual approaches to art-making: ‘I felt very strongly about feminism and photography better expressed my political ideals.’2

Indeed, Hunter believed that art could be a political tool, and through the popular medium of photography she sought to expose gender roles and connect with other women and their experiences. Like many feminist artists at the time, Hunter used herself in her work. This was partly as a form of personal exploration and partly to overcome the politics of using another person as a model and thereby objectifying them. Hunter once remarked that ‘conceptual art of the early 1970s was not gender-neutral. It was obvious that it was a man taking the photographs’.3 Here, in contrast, a woman is both the artist and the model. She is in control and calling the shots — a fact aggressively reinforced by the pointed gun.

Hunter expected the viewer to think. But little did she realise that she would receive condemnation for ‘attempting to make men look through the eyes of a woman’.4 She later recalled: ‘For feminist artists “the personal is political” was one of the most important slogans in the 1970s. Being subjective as women in our work was the bravest and most radical thing we could do at the time. This female subjectivity became the most hated aspect of our work.’5

Sarah Farrar 

1 Alexis Hunter, quoted in Lynda Morris, ‘Alexis Hunter obituary’, The Guardian, 11 March 2014, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/11/alexis-hunter (accessed 28 November 2017).

2 Hunter, quoted in Julia Roberts, ‘Alexis’ art stops people in their tracks!’, New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, 24 July 1989, p. 106.

3 Hunter, quoted in John Roberts (ed.), The impossible document: Photography and conceptual art in Britain, 1966–1976, Camerawork, London, 1997, p. 128.

4 Hunter, quoted in Virginia Were, ‘Do we still need feminism?’, Art News, Winter 2007, p. 77.

5 Hunter, quoted in Roberts (ed.), The impossible document, p. 128.

 

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Alexis Hunter once remarked that ‘conceptual art of the early 1970s was not gender-neutral. It was obvious that it was a man taking the photographs’. Here, in contrast, a woman is both the artist and the model. She is in control – a fact aggressively reinforced by the pointed gun.

Hunter believed that art could be a political tool. Through the popular medium of photography, she sought to expose gender roles, and connect with other women and their experiences.

Hunter expected the viewer to think. But little did she realise the flak she would get for ‘attempting to make men look through the eyes of a woman’.