Polixeni Papapetrou
Polixeni Papapetrou is a Melbourne-based photographer. She creates fantastical worlds that feature her children.
The works currently installed at William St span a decade of her work, and show how costumes and backdrops have changed as the artist’s children have grown older. In the images from her recent series The Ghillies, her actors wear camouflage suits to blend into the landscape. Also on view are black and white studio photographs from the earlier series Phantomwise. In these photographs her elaborately masked characters seem to inhabit other times and places.
As Papapetrou transforms her children from everyday youngsters into gypsy queens and living landscapes, she blurs the distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’. This focus on the theatricality of childhood play also reflects on the medium of photography, and its capacity to bridge truth and fiction.
