The gulf (redhead)

This work comprises 20 long strips of photographic paper with images printed in horizontal format one after another down the length of each strip. There are 24-5 images on each strip. The strips hang side by side, each aligned at the top hanging edge. Imagery consists of such things as close-ups of carpet or fabric, ornaments such as buttons, ribbons, faces of women, a wedding, white swans, a boat harbour, a group in a dinghy, a country scene with hayricks, a rugged peninsula, etc.

This work uses Gavin Hipkins' 'Fall' technique whereby he printed an unedited roll of film on one continuous strip of paper and then hung a number of these machine printed strips side-by-side as 'falls' on the wall.

This work is one of seven titled 'The gulf'. Each of these takes a category of web pornography: Teen, Blonde, Mature, Asian, Latina, Ebony, and Red-headed. Hipkins photographed women from internet porn sites and then combined these images with cliched travel photographs taken from travel brochures and books. In each case he copied photographs that fitted the porn theme under consideration. So 'Redhead' features tourist scenes of Ireland, a country known for its read-headed people. The remaining types of images in these falls are non-descript carpet or fabric backgrounds and shots of small personal accessories such as buttons, ribbons and hair-ties.

The falls are reminiscent of film footage hanging in a cutting room: frozen, incomplete fragments of moving images. However, here it is possible to readily view the frames, and unlike a projected film it is possible to see images before and after, and to either side, of that in the film gate.

The loose juxtaposition of female typologies and tourist brochure in 'Readhead' reveal how much each are as much fantasy stereotypes as the other, and the role photography plays in creating them. Hipkins has also said that the addition of the still-life photos of small objects makes explicit this fetishistic nature of photography.