Venus

source: estou-semblogspot

Petrina Hicks produz fotografias me passam uma sensação de limpidez, ao mesmo tempo em que beiram o surreal. É um olhar cristalino e minimalista, em que as imagens produzidas pela artista estimulam outros sentidos além da visão
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source: headoncomau

Petrina Hicks utilises the seductive and glossy language of commercial photography to create artworks that probe at the false promise of perfection, exploring photography’s ability to both create and corrupt the process of seduction and consumption. Petrina Hicks has exhibited widely through solo and groups shows in Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, USA, UK, Japan, China, Mexico and Brazil.
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source: artblart

Hicks control over the ‘presence’ of the image, her control over the presence within the image is immaculate. To observe how she modulates the colour shift from blush of pink within the conch shell, to colour of skin, to colour of background is an absolute joy to behold. The pastel colours of skin and background only serve to illuminate the richness of the pink within the shell as a form of immaculate conception (an openness of the mind and of the body). I don’t really care who is looking at this photograph (not another sexualised male gaze!) the form is just beauty itself. I totally fell in love with this work.

Forget the neo-feminist readings, one string of text came to mind: The high fidelity of a fetishistic fecundity.
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source: smhcomau

Sexuality, hiding in plain sight – Petrina Hicks has won the Bowness Photography Prize for her image Venus.
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus shows the goddess chastely covering herself with her long golden hair, yet the scallop shell she stands on would have been widely understood as symbolising female genitalia.
We can see how Hick’s update – a young woman, framed in torso, obscures her face behind a lusciously pink conch shell – plays a similarly knowing game of hide-and-seek.
Hicks says her image mines mythology and art history to explore depictions of women: “The earliest representations of women in art strongly relate around one thing; the female as life giver, fertility and childbirth.”
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source: artgallerynswgovau
Born in Sydney, Petrina Hicks studied photo media at Canberra School of Art, ANU and now lives and works in Sydney. She has produced several series of photographs in the last 4 years focusing on young people, and is particularly interested in showing the tension between beauty and imperfection.

‘Shenae and Jade’ is typical of Hicks’ unconventional portraits. The young model holds the budgie’s head in her mouth. It’s the kind of slightly dangerous behaviour which can be unnerving to observe. The freckled nose of the model is in tension with her smooth pale temples, heavily lashed closed eyes and soft white top. The luminescent background and generally pale colouration throw the headless body of the brightly coloured budgie into high relief.

Hicks has won several prizes including Sydney Life, Art & About 2004 and the Josephine Ulrich Photography Award for Portraiture 2003. She has most recently exhibited in Melbourne in ‘Light sensitive: contemporary Australian photography from the Loti Smorgon Fund’ at the National Gallery of Victoria.
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source: iconocomunicaciones

La australiana Petrina Hicks, que vive y trabaja en Sidney, toca diferentes campos y se ha convertido en toda una referencia de la fotografía de vanguardia. Su trabajo que rezuma surrealismo, sutileza y conceptualismo absoluto para transcender más allá de un mero mensaje fotográfico y convertirse en toda una expresión de seducción visual. Los retratos y bodegones de Hicks, encuentran y desbordan belleza a partir de situaciones a veces, absurdas, otras intrigantes, muchas motivadas por la misma imperfección de sus protagonistas o por la sensación de que nada de lo que vemos, nos lleva a ninguna conclusión… por lo menos razonable.