Sydney Exhibition

Artists / Alessia Britti, Sasha Satz & Elsiena ten Kate

The Pleasure of Looking is an investigation into the ‘act of looking’. The different conceptual manifestations of the ‘gaze’ are addressed in the much theorised male gaze, and recontextualised to add an inclusive twist.

Alessia Britti’s paintings revolve around the depiction of women with an emphasis on the gaze, both male and female. By subverting the male gaze and recontextualising it from the subject to the material the female gaze shifts from passivity to activity, opening dialectics of female desire. Britti explores the erotic nature of desire which has been coded for impact with the male gaze. The work is aesthetically located in a mid-century context and utilises soft core erotica and fetish material of the era. The work both studies the act of looking, and eroticises the act of looking.

Sasha Satz is a printmaker whose works explore the microaggressions that perpetuate the otherness of women. Polished representations of the female in mainstream media create internalised shame and disgust of what is deemed grotesque. Satz is interested in the damage that occurs when distancing the daily experience of women from the public eye. Her work explores the nature of women viewing themselves through the lens of another, particularly a gaze constructed under a strict patriarchal code. Satz normalises the images of women that are not catered to through the media because they do not serve a voyeuristic purpose, nor do they cater to a palatable preconception of women.

Elsiena ten Kate’s work is currently inspired by images drawn from erotic romance novels, or ‘bodice rippers’. Her paintings explore the curiosity of an image created solely for women’s erotic consumption alone, where male intentions are completely irrelevant. Rather than an image that would evoke a sense of shame or discomfort, the work intends to celebrate the excessive ‘kitsch’ aesthetic as well as the manifestation of female erotic agency. These images reappropriate erotic imagery; the male gaze is obsolete, while the male body is objectified in a way that is both erotic and humorous.

All Artists are National Art School alumni and graduated in 2018.