Yvonne Todd

New Zealand photographer Yvonne Todd got her training in commercial photography. Her work draws heavily on its techniques and genres: particularly portrait, product and scenic photographies. While commercial photographers are trained to make things look perfect, to promote a fantasy-of-reality, Todd’s images are always not-quite-right. Her images cue us for the fantasy, but deliberately fall short of the commercial ideal. As Megan Dunn explains, 'Todd avoids the hackneyed sentiments of the fantasist and the drudgery of the unmitigated realist, instead amalgamating the two to form a unique oeuvre at once erotic, nostalgic and deeply effecting.' Women are Todd’s key subject. Her oeuvre is overrun with female characters: damaged, gawky, misfit, variously hobbled or proud. All seem to exemplify some physical, psychological or sociological malaise, implicit or explicit. Todd describes her cast as a 'rainbow of affliction', stressing an oddly utopian underside to their collective or cumulative condition. Our show – Blood, In Its Various Forms (incorporating Meat & Liquor) – includes works from Todd’s three recent series (Vagrants’ Reception Centre; Blood, In It’s Various Forms; and Meat & Liquor) plus new works. We will be launching Dead Starlets Assoc., our new book on Todd’s work, with the show. It's been supported by Creative New Zealand.

Yvonne Todd
Blood, In Its Various Forms...