Library – Press Articles

  • Camera follows the children’s journey

    Alicia Wood, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 30 January 2011, p. 36

    THE transition between childhood and adolescence is a recurring theme in the photographs of Melbourne artist Polixeni Papapetrou. But that doesn't mean she takes her children's transition any easier than any other mother.

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  • Consequence of images

    Corrie Perkin, The Australian, Sydney, August 22, 2008, p. 10

    ONE Sunday morning last month, a culture war was declared on an unsuspecting Melbourne family. Artist and lawyer Polixeni Papapetrou and her husband Robert Nelson were woken up at 5.30am by a television producer seeking an interview to discuss the July issue of Art Monthly Australia magazine. The Sunday Telegraph had published a story that morning under the headline "Art mag's 'sick' nude child stunt" that referred to the cover image of a naked five-year-old girl.

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  • Protecting art for art’s sake

    Gerard Vaughan, Herald Sun, Melbourne, 8 July 2008, p.19

    The controversy surrounding Bill Henson's depiction of nude teenagers in his photographic art began as a reaction to the image of a 13-year-old printed on the invitation to his commercial exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery in Sydney. Within days - encouraged by the ill-judged comments of some senior public figures in NSW and the ACT - we observed the depressing spectacle of police raids on public galleries there, and the removal from public view of works by Bill Henson.

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  • Little and lost to the land

    Philippa Hawker, The Age, Melbourne, A2, 10 February, 2007, p. 19

    IN RECENT YEARS, Polixeni Papapetrou has been photographing childhood: its trappings and expectations, its meanings and its symbols. It is a many-layered, rich, ambiguous vision. Her images are stylised, carefully staged, heightened depictions: at their centre, for the most part, has been a particular child, her daughter, Olympia.

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  • Time after Time

    Christopher Allen, The Weekend Australian, pp.10-11, 25 June 2016

    Gregg’s juxtapositions are primarily intuitive, that is, based on an aesthetic and imaginative response to the images rather than trying, as is so often the case, to force any interpretative straitjacket on to them. Thus Pieter Brueghel’s etching of an Alpine landscape (c. 1555-56) is paired with Polixeni Papapetrou’s whimsical yet poignant photograph of a figure, high on a mountaintop, with a deer’s head. This is perhaps the riskiest pairing in the show, because the highly saturated photograph is so foreign to the linear etching, but the thematic affinity seems to make it just plausible.

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  • Views on the beach, In Paris, With Masks

    William Meyers, The Wall Street Journal, New York, 1-2 June 2013, p. A20

    Photography exhibitions of Polixeni Papapetrou, Martin Parr and women photo artists in 1920-1930s Paris.

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