Through performative photography and portraiture, frequently depicting herself and family members wearing clothes of dead loved ones, Paula Mahoney explores the relationship between personal loss, our history and how grief can echo in the Australian landscape as an absence.
Mahoney posits lamentation as a necessary yet optimistic viewpoint that suggests psychological shifts, creating both an awareness of our limitations and our connection to each other and to a greater whole; returning the image of death and mourning into public consciousness in a way that combines hope and despair.
Paula Mahoney, Grief makes us strangers, 2022, from the series ‘This landscape holds grief’, pigment inkjet print, 80 × 120cm. Courtesy the artist, Fletcher Arts, Melbourne and Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne
Monash Gallery of Art
29 September to 13 November 2022
Melbourne
