New Zealand photographer Yvonne Todd is taking over both floors of City Gallery. Around 150 photographs will feature in her survey exhibition. It's the first time City Gallery has given over so much space to one artist. Creamy Psychology showcases the breadth of Todd's work since the late 1990s and aims to expand our understanding and appreciation of it. The show includes a display of Todd's collection of vintage designer gowns that feature in her images (some previously owned by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Whitney Houston); and photographs by other artists that are reference points for her (including Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Mike Disfarmer).
"Since the early 2000s, Yvonne Todd has emerged as an uncannily subtle exponent of what might be called The Aesthetics of Meanness, an artist who pursues social discomfort—ours included—as tenaciously as Ansel Adams pursued light on the flanks of Yosemite." Justin Paton.
Todd uses the generic language of commercial studio photography and quotes mainstream pop-culture, but she produces off-kilter images that express a personal mythology. She is best known for her images of female ‘characters’. These portraits are highly styled; using wigs, costumes, makeup and even false teeth. Todd women seem to suffer from some soap-operatic malaise, explicit or implicit, be they cosmeticians, cripples, modest Christians, anorexics, cult members, showgirls or tragic heiresses. Her work has a complex relation with feminism.
"My favourite author when I was twelve or thirteen, Virgina Andrews, wrote gothic tales of beautiful teenage girls involuntarily corrupted by perverse ancestral legacies. The artwork of the books added to this intrigue... like Hallmark sympathy cards, they possessed a combination of limp serenity and shrill unease." Yvonne Todd.
