Not limited to a particular era or country, curator Dr Christopher Chapman selected artists based on their sensitive and truthful depictions stating, “These artists are willing to explore a real rawness in the experiences of coming of age – trying to understand who we are and where we fit in”. From this focus ‘Tough and Tender’ includes artists Robert Mapplethorpe, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and Collier Schorr selected alongside contemporary Australian artists Rozalind Drummond and Warwick Baker.
Throughout the exhibition, the body is common ground for artists to connect the audience with the male form at its most vulnerable and revealed. The body as Chapman outlines, represents “that sense of touch, a sense of closeness with another person, a feeling of understanding or reflecting on your own physical body.” Famous for his sensual evocations of the body Mapplethorpe’s photographs are direct in how they depict the sensuality of skin and the tautness of muscle.
Engaging with his physical self, performance artist Chris Burden’s practice examined the mythic paradigms of manhood and coming of age rituals in a compilation of his performance works created in the mid-70s. The extreme physical acts test his boundaries of pain, such as in Shoot when Burden is shot in the arm by his friend. On the inclusion of Burden, Chapman states, “There is a stripping back of what there is to be a man and the expectations of toughness around that. For him there is also an aesthetic sense of controlling your body through your mind, so he put himself these physical trials a bit like an Indian yogi.”
In the curation of the show Chapman worked with Melbourne-based artists Drummond and Baker to select their works, “they photograph the worlds around them, and again there is an absolute normality of what they are documenting.” Focusing on personal everyday experiences of masculinity, Chapman stresses, “It is not an exhibition that tries to represent a movement in art, or a thematic approach to masculine or feminine. It is a subtler look to the emotional feelings to how you fit in, or if you feel a little different to anyone else.”
Whilst the recent public debate and media circus around gender fluidity is controversial, ‘Tough and Tender’ does not respond to this. “There is nothing sensational about the topic, Chapman states, “All the artists take a very gentle approach to the way they explore, sexuality, identity and gender.” It is this attitude that grounds the exhibition with a tone of quiet understanding.
‘Tough and Tender’ demonstrates the value of art as a medium of expression to present the multifaceted experience of masculinity that far outstretches the limited stereotypes presented in the popular vernacular. Subtle and meditative, Chapman sums it up perfectly, “I think of it like a poem, it sits together really nicely and it sits really quietly. Whilst there are some raw images in there, the overall feeling of the show is a very soft one.”
National Portrait Gallery
15 July to 16 October, 2016
Australian Capital Territory
