Dear friends,
For many of us in Melbourne, and across the world, wearing masks outside of our homes has been a necessary readjustment. Across history, masks have long held an important role as modes of self-expression, cultural tradition, protection and activism. This week we explore some of the masks in the NGV Collection.
Winter by Wenceslas Hollar, a work from 1643–44, depicts a young woman warmly dressed for the cold in a hood, multiple skirts, fur collar, muff and wearing a mask which was typically worn to shelter delicate complexions. Her lace-trimmed underskirts and dainty shoes peeping beneath the lifted skirt tell another story, highlighting the erotic connotations of the print, which are further exacerbated by the woman’s direct gaze and the inscribed verse beneath the image: 'For a smoother skin at night / Embraceth her with more delight'.
Infamous Australian designer and performance artist Leigh Bowery was a key figure in London’s nightclub scene throughout the 1980s. As the host and public face of Taboo, London’s most progressive and decadent club, Bowery blurred the boundaries between art, fashion and performance with his perverse ‘looks’, such as Pregnant tutu head, which radically challenged ideas of normality.
Alexander McQueen similarly challenged fashion norms. His 1996 spring-summer collection The Hunger was named after Tony Scott’s 1983 film starring Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie as vampires. The collection explored themes of mortality and decay with sharply-tailored garments featuring wound like slashes and sheer panels, presented to a soundtrack produced by Bjork. This outfit features an integrated head covering akin to a fencing mask, a motif that McQueen revisited in subsequent collections.
For the Pacific Islander peoples, masks are worn in ceremonies that have spiritual, religious and social significance, or may be concerned with mourning, fertility, love, magic or curing sickness. This gourd mask from the Eastern Highland depicts a bush spirit. While not always evil, these spirits can wreak havoc on the unwary, or those who transgress village customs. During dances, masked men with these gourd masks, weave in and out of the regimented, brightly decorated 'human' dancers. The erratic behaviour of the gourd dancers shows the unstable character of these 'bush spirits' compared to the strong men.
In Japanese theatre, masks have long been used for character transformation. Noh is a masked dance-drama in which the extreme stylisation of actors’ movements and music evoke a beautiful and mysterious atmosphere for narratives that move between the human and spiritual realms. Noh masks can be categorised into three groups: male and female humans; ghosts and spirits; and supernatural demons. Shakumi is a middle-aged woman with worldly experience who usually appears in the role of a mother. Chūjō is a warrior of imperial linage, a reputed poet and romantic, who appears in the roles of gallant general and nobleman. Kawazu is a ghost or spirit who returns to the world of the living driven by a desire for vengeance. And Ōbeshimi is a mythical goblin that lives in the mountains and possesses supernatural powers and military skills.
Sidney Nolan devised his iconic image of Ned Kelly in 1946–47 when he embarked on his first landmark series of paintings devoted to the folkloric bushranger. His depiction of Kelly centred upon the homemade armour that Kelly’s gang fashioned from plough mouldboards and wore at the last stand at the Glenrowan Hotel in 1880. Nolan radically reduced the helmet to a flat black rectangle with a single slit for the eyes and this image has become the iconic representation of Ned Kelly.
The Yowie is an exciting new video work recently acquired by NGV, produced by Worimi artist Dean Cross, who was born and raised on Ngunnawal/Ngambri Country. The Yowie, originally shown as part of an installation titled The Mausoleum in 2017, refers directly to the black-silhouetted figure that populates Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series. Cross has filmed his own version of the Kelly character in an Australian Army ghillie suit, colloquially called a yowie. Symbolically the work is about the meeting of two worlds: night and the day, the water and the land, black and white. The Yowie is a powerful contemporary work that provides an Indigenous perspective on Australia’s settler history.
We can find many examples of masks being used to obscure, rather than reflect the wearer's identity. In her work Self-portrait, Maria Kozic undercuts notions of self-representation and psychological scrutiny often associated with the tradition of self-portraiture by depicting herself with her face covered by a fairground horror-mask.
The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous collective, formed in New York City in 1985, who describe themselves as ‘feminist activist artists’. Their posters, billboards, books, videos and live lectures use facts, humour and bold visuals to expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world and popular culture. The idea to wear gorilla masks in public was inspired by an early misspelling of the collective’s name, and most of the members adopted pseudonyms inspired by deceased female artists. They argue that this anonymity keeps the focus on the issues: ‘we could be anyone and we are everywhere’. The Guerrilla Girls’ work, such as The Guerrilla Girls Guide to Behaving Badly, understands that investigations of representation, power and subjectivity are complex and multifaceted.
Neri Oxman’s architectural and design projects reflect her fascination with biology and technology. She works at the cutting edge of computational design, digital fabrication, materials science and synthetic biology. This mask has been created using a Stratasys printer that prints 3D forms by depositing colourful polymer droplets in layers. Oxman and her design team at MIT used fluid dynamics modelling software and colourful and translucent resins to produce masks that look organic and alive. As an architect, Neri Oxman believes that the products and buildings we design are extensions of our human body and should be mindfully integrated.
While masks are currently taking on a very practical role, they also are, and will be, a symbol of this pandemic period. Last week we acquired Ai Wei Wei's series of face masks that reflect exactly this; his sketches encapsulate the sentiment of many, messages that are visual reminders of this moment in time.
Stay safe, stay well.
My best wishes,
Tony Ellwood AM
Director, National Gallery of Victoria
