Gallery 1 – Space A
Present Adolescent
Elle Ross
Elle Ross is a Melbourne-based artist working predominantly in photography. Her practice centres on the traditional male ‘gaze’ and attempts to subvert and disrupt these social conditions, which saturate our visual landscape. As photography is the primary vessel carrying these ideas, Ross uses the medium to dislocate complacency, this time re-presenting the male nude as vulnerable and submissive, components Ross recognises as characteristic of the male ‘gaze’. In her works Ross reacts to the absurdity of ‘gender privilege’ through the frank nudity that is displayed her images, which becomes a tongue in cheek nod to the ‘freedom’ that male bodies represent. They are an ironic homage to the way in which women’s bodies are highly sexualised, yet highly controlled by the autocratic, patriarchal society in which we live. Furthering her investigation, Ross looks to the body undergoing transition to locate and understand the ways in which preconceived prejudices are imposed onto and effect those who define themselves as different to the gender they were assigned at birth.
