Tales from Elsewhere
Australian Centre for Photography – Sydney
February 4th, 2011 to March 12th, 2011
Curated by Alasdair Foster
This is the first major retrospective of the work of the internationally acclaimed Australian photo-artist Polixeni Papapetrou. Papapetrou has always been interested in the idea of acquired personas, of dressing up and reinventing the self. Initially her visual explorations concentrated on the liminal reaches of the adult world: Elvis Presley impersonators, body builders and drag queens. This exhibition focuses on a series of highly evolved bodies of work created in collaboration with her children, Olympia and Solomon, and their friends. Made over the past dozen years the images use play and dress-ups to explore the complex and often contradictory attitudes of the adult world towards children.