Heather Straka - reviewed

…another dissection

Heather Straka

Trish Clark Gallery, Auckland

1 November - 21 December 2019

Reviewed by John Hurrell for EyeContact, 4 December 2019

Straka Satire
Allegorical images are quite rare in contemporary art, and understandably these highly ambiguous, linked up Heather Straka photographs—they have the antiqued look (caused by the impeccably controlled light and fine detail) of Andrew Wyeth egg tempera interiors—are open to a number of interpretations.

Heather Straka, Thing of the Past, 2019, archival pigment photograph on photorag ultrasmooth, 994 x 1600mm

Politically Straka‘s apparent banner of ‘Vive La Révolution’—gloating over the demolition of a room (read Western Civilization) and its piano (ie. colonialist arts culture)—is I think obviously ironic. Many of the images are mischievous and provocative, being filled with art historical references and calculatedly over reductive in their apparent ‘meanings.’

There are two teams here: delissimo gals versus yummy guys. Five svelte multi-racial femmes (posing awkwardly, as if in a fashion shoot, clutching Molotov cocktails and oxy-acetylene cutting torches) are about to blow the priapic patriarchy to smithereens. Four brutish brawny hunks straining with their shirts off (overtones of Cézanne’s Bathers and Iwo Jima marines) are huffing and puffing to put it together again. In this nihilistic piss-take, loaded with tropes, nothing changes. Boo hoo…

Read more:http://eyecontactsite.com/2019/12/straka-satire#ixzz67kRxrkYf
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