at PG Gallery, Melbourne, 2019
Walking North Out of the Shadow is a series of collages playing with the space between — between shadow and light, between image and perception, between intolerance and acceptance, between power and empowerment. The impetus for the series is the idea of the shadow — living in someone else’s shadow, living in the shadow of history, living in the shadow cast by oppression and cruelty. Created using fashion magazines and vintage history journals, the works situates the fashion industry — with its insidious structures of power — as a metaphor for the downtrodden, abused and overlooked. The materiality of the work — hand-cut, hand-glued collage — reflects the labour of women, and of people of colour, through history; the invisible labour done in the shadows that props up the structures of power. Walking North Out of the Shadow is a gesture towards stepping out of the shadow, towards possibility.
— Helen Gory, 2019
Works (top grid): 2019, collage transferred to giclée print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 34 cm
Works (bottom grid): 2019, analogue collage on vintage paper
