The XX Factor 3.0

Stela Brennan, Gil Hanly, Susan Leonard, Julia Morison, Nova Paul, Tia Ranginui, Marie Shannon, Heather Straka, Christine Webster

Trish Clark Gallery
142 Great North Road, Grey Lynn, Auckland

23 November – 23 December, 2023

Preview: Thursday 23 November, 5 - 7pm

IN CONVERSATION: Curators Christina Barton and Nina Dyer with artists Stella Brennan, Marie Shannon and Heather Straka,  Saturday 2 December 11am

Two X chromosomes reach through millennia, delivering the realities and rigours of roughly half of humankind. A play on the doubled X chromosome and subversive of the glib evaluation of women’s ‘x factor’ we present the 3rd iteration of The XX Factor — 2016’s The XX Factor broadly focussed on the politics of identity and included international luminaries alongside local artists, while 2020’s The XX Factor 2.0 broadly focussed on existential themes in pandemic times. The XX Factor 3.0, broadly focussed on portraiture, shines a lens on the practices of nine local artists spanning three generations whose works engage with expanded notions of portraiture.

Staying true to the feminist adage that the personal is political, The XX Factor 3.0 combines portraiture’s biographical elements and historical-political implications so the localised yet expansive conduit of personal experience gives expression to this complex relation. With works bridging personal biography and social, cultural, and technological histories, the artists have utilized diverging technologies and embodied knowledge to both investigate their presents and to imagine possible futures. Realised in photography, moving image, archival documentary, sculpture and painting, this expanded consideration of what a portrait can be features representations of people and suggestive portraits of feelings, places, and states of being.

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