Zoe Porter’s exhibition Penumbra comprises recent works on paper, artist’s books and photographic documentation of recent live collaborative performances.
Penumbra brings together a curated selection of works on paper produced over the last twelve to eighteen months. These intriguing works explore various in-between states of being through body transformations and animal-human hybrid forms. Porter’s watercolours question the continual flux of human identity and connections with the animal world. For the first time, Porter also presents photographic documentation from live collaborative performances in public spaces which investigate themes of dislocation and metamorphosis. These performances blur the boundaries between the rational and dream-like state, presenting surreal environments and costume appendages which offer possibilities for other ways of being.
“Persistent in Zoe Porter’s work is the presence of bodies. Bodies draped and wilting. Bodies disorganised and disoriented. Larval bodies and cryptic bodies. In her own words, the artist asks that we put ourselves in a mind of metamorphism, zoomorphism and anthropomorphism.” – Dr William Platz, catalogue essay.