Synopses & Reviews
Born in Oxfordshire in 1959 and trained at the Royal College of Art, Gregory has been producing "objects of beauty"since the early 1980s. But beneath the surface of her seductive images lies a powerful engagement with the themes of race, gender and identity. The Handbag Project, for instance, features images of 1950s women's purses-beautiful and seemingly innocent. These are items found in Johannesburg junkshops that take on depth and power as symbols of white privilege. Gregory's photos are featured, each previously collected and shown by museums worldwide, with a short essay by Deborah Willis, curator of exhibitions at the Center for African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.
Review
Joy Gregorys work points out that there is no singular model of that elusive quality we call beauty. Her photographs and photographic constructions ask us to contemplate the meaning of beauty, desire and self-possession. In images and stories, she investigates the historical perceptions of beauty and the role advertising plays in constructing desire. Re-invigorating the Black Is Beautiful aesthetic of the 1960s and 1970s, her self-portraits represent women as objects of desire. Images of underwear, handbags, high-heel slippers and jewellery suggest displays in an ethnographic exhibit or an apparel boutique catalogue yet, as art historian Cheryl Finley argues, Gregorys golden high-heeled pumps are not ashamed to be desirable. They are sexy and self-conscious, posing and acutely aware.
Beauty is power for Gregory. She offers a critique of beauty in art and culture, and at the same time she celebrates, canonizes, and makes humorously, gloriously real the relationship of beauty to everyday life.
- Deborah Willis, Professor of Photography &Imaging, &Africana Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
About the Author
Born in Bicester, Oxfordshire in 1959, Joy Gregory studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art, London. Since the early 1980s, she has used her talent for making objects of beauty to work through themes of race, gender and identity so that they are both beautiful and about beauty using a variety of photographic media including photograms, gum bichromates, cyanotypes and video stills. Her work has been widely exhibited worldwide, including at the Johannesburg and Havana Bienales, the National Gallery of South Africa, Cape Town and the Victoria &Albert Museum, London.