Richard Saltoun Gallery is now hosting a solo exhibition of works by Alexis Hunter, a pivotal figure in the 1970s British Feminist Movement. It is the most extensive display of Hunter’s works since the acclaimed exhibition Sexual Warfare at Goldsmiths CCA in 2018.
Approach to Fear XIII: Pain – Destruction of Cause, 1977 (detail). Copyright The Estate of the Artist
10 Seconds focuses on Hunter’s most iconic works that utilise photography to produce photo-narrative sequences questioning gender stereotypes and patriarchal image culture. Included are famous series such as Domestic Warfare (1975) and Approaches to Fear (1977).
The photographs themselves hold a sexual masochism and pleasure, a sense of commodification and the price of betraying our principles amidst the pressures of capitalism and the media.
Domestic Warfare, 1979, copyright The Estate of the Artist, via Richard Saltoun
Addressing the effect of advertising, Hunter devised the photo narratives to unfold over a minimum of ten seconds, mirroring the space of attention of watching a TV advert. The exhibition draws attention to Hunter’s relationship to moving image and mass media, disrupting the conventions of both to stage ambiguous unfolding scenes that interplay desire, liberation, containment, and violence. These works remain relevant at a time in which women’s equality remains unrealised in many areas of life and is unevenly distributed.
…I set up the narrative sequences to work as advertising does, within a minimum of ten seconds
The photo narratives, made up of grids of photographic images that lead sequentially from action to action, demonstrate her engagement with conceptual art, feminist film theory, psychoanalysis and socialism, as part of a collective conversation with fellow artists, curators, and activist groups. The works strain towards the medium of film, which Hunter had worked in previously but rejected as being too resource heavy to produce.
Hunter used photography for its instantaneity, and reference to both TV and women’s magazine adverts. It was central to her to use a visual language that could be read by audiences outside of the confines of an elitist and male dominated art world.
The Marxist’s Wife (still does the housework), 1978/2005, copyright The Estate of the Artist, via Richard Saltoun
Typically featuring red nail varnished hands performing various actions, the works demand that we read the unfolding actions from a woman protagonists’ perspective; a radical rejoinder to a visual culture built on the male gaze. They are however anything but didactic, leaving room for visceral response and multiple interpretations. Images show stiletto shoes on fire, a wall being demolished, and grease covered hands caressing motor parts, in what can be read as incisive political critiques of misogyny, capitalism’s deployment of gender as a facet of consumer society, but also as an exploration of the deep fears and anxieties that underwrite embattled relationships between men and women, and women’s nascent self-realisation.
10 Seconds will be on display until March 30 2024.
