Siobhan Davis Dance - Positions - Eva Stenram

Eva Stenram presents the UK premiere of her ongoing series 'Parts', as well as new artworks specially produced for this exhibition. Parts uses 1960s pin-up photographs as its main material. Each of the 1960s pin-up pictures are digitally altered, editing out most of the model and leaving only one leg intact. The resultant mood is disturbing, the severed limb takes away the attraction and the photograph's original erotic effect is turned on its head. When just one leg of the model remains, this leg calls attention to the rest of the scene. Viewers may try to piece together the original position of the model, or perhaps accept the leg as an absurd interior decoration or prop.

The new works use fragments of positions from pin-up images to describe potential movement, for example a photographic score made from a sequence of poses repeated in modulating patterns. Longer or shorter exposure times while printing the pictures introduce the temporal element of the sequence. Another new work utilises three risqué photographs taken by Irving Klaw in the 1950s of Bettie Page and other pin-up models. The purchased photographs are reframed, so that you can't see most of the photographs, leaving only an isolated section of each picture available for the viewer to see.

The photographs themselves I don't find particularly interesting as I feel they are almost just pictures of a leg. However without knowing they are the edited versions of 1960 pin-up models you could think they are photographs of prosthetic legs placed in a particular area, making an audience think about who may have this leg and why is it in this particular location or even position.

I think the way the artist used the exhibition space was amazing, using the whole building to display her images, the sheet at the entrance of the exhibition gives you the title of the image and a description of where you will find that particular image, even having one image displayed in the down stairs disabled toilet, also shows the artist has a sense of humour and is daring. The space itself is a dance studio so displaying images of legs links well with its location as dancers use their whole body to dance mostly their legs, which with no doubt the artist thought about when choosing her location. I also like how Stenren displayed her work in multiple different ways from simply putting a picture in a frame and hanging it, to hanging multiple images in a grid and also showing a sequence of images in a slideshow on a old projector like little T.V screen. This has made me realise with my own work that if you want you work to stand out and really be shown exactly how you want it to be viewed by your audience, then it is key that you display it in a certain way, instead of just walking into a gallery space with white walls and just see standard prints in frames hung on a wall.