Shapeshifter _{by Isabella Smith}

There’s a large degree of chance involved in Andrea Gardner’s practice. She collects fabrics and wallpaper from op shops, is gifted brightly coloured house paints, and what starts with a plan unfurls into something entirely different through an intuitive kind of play. “I get seduced by colour and pattern… Two of the photos in the show have pleated fabric in them which is very sculptural to bend, fold, or stretch over another shape”, Andrea says.

What emerges is an eclectic series of photographs taken by the artist, who makes props and poses in staged environments reminiscent of the old French Tableaux. “My academic background is in painting, drawing, and sculpture. I am not a trained photographer. So, I like the making and assembling part of the process.”

Some of those same props appear at the foot of the photographs in the gallery space: a tubular mask, bricks made of cardboard, dried manure painted gold.

Andrea shapeshifts through the images. Adorning different wigs and robes, she blends into textured backgrounds or gets caught in a swirl of paint. Stockinged legs appear out of brightly coloured geometric forms, a solitary ear quietly takes stock, a figure stands in contrapposto pose adorning a box with an image of a foot on her head. Yet the limbs dislocated from their bodies feel whimsical and humorous. They invite new acts of looking and being looked at.

Andrea’s work is very physical. The studio is quiet, with the sounds of sheep in nearby paddocks entering through the window. Andrea moves back and forth between tripod and staged setups, exploring different forms, “just like a kid playing dress up”, she says, “looking for an imaginary world where a gloved hand can be mysterious… I like the works to be quite enigmatic which lets the viewers make up their own story.”

Full of replica and collaging, each new layer is evidence of Andrea’s process and seems to disrupt the logic of things, creating more and more distance between familiar objects and their original meaning and contexts. “Things get layered because I save almost everything! Then I can reuse bits and pieces”, Andrea says. “I had a large old empty frame with glass that I propped up in the studio. I painted on it with the house paints and then posed behind it. This was a very fun series enjoying the drips and brushstrokes. I probably did 30 or so works exploring how to pose behind different colours and shapes of paint.”

Tableaux is on until the 10^th of September at the recently opened gallery Nine Fathom Deep on Cambridge Terrace. The exhibition is rich in colour and motion, reflecting Andrea’s interest in the ways “the unconscious mind, intuition, and unexpected and poetic juxtaposition of imagery” can reveal things about identity. Through her performative images, she reveals that identity is made up of a mutable arrangement of scripted conventions and balancing acts, which are both personal and universally shared.