Although the cinematic quality of her photographs might evoke the dark sensuality of Bill Henson or the surreal narratives of David Lynch, the place to begin with Roberta Thornley's work is in the 'everyday' world. There is no narrative linking her works. Rather, they are discrete images about the simplest and yet most evocative of ideas. Contained within each work is a sense of the efflorescence of life and the wet, dark, decaying extreme that is part of its cycle of disintegration and renewal. Her work has an underlying element of unease, as if each image marks a crucial connection between beauty, desire, and the 'bible-black' of melancholy.
In spite of its being carefully staged, Thornley begins each photographic session with little idea of what will result. The final photographs are an outcome of the process of working with the object or model (often a friend or family member). The physical and emotional fatigue of Rosie was captured only after hours of posing. Drenched with water, she is blank, resigned, and exhausted. It is these moments of letting go - of truthfulness - to which we intuitively respond. They elicit what Roland Barthes calls the photographic 'shock' that is not about 'traumatising' so much as about 'revealing'. (i)
Thornley is a recent graduate of the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts and at the age of 25 she has already generated a consistent body of work. She has a clear sense of what her photographs mean and where she wants to take them, with each series becoming more refined and more simplified. The strength of Thornley's work lies in her having, quite remarkably, and in a very short period of time, claimed her own ground.
Dr Kriselle Baker
published in: Art New Zealand, Issue 134, Winter 2010
Buying Committee;
Blair, Claire, Kathryn
Purchased September 2011
