Writers in Action Blog 2: Unsettling

An underlying theme throughout Write Around the Murray (WAM) 2016 was “unsettling”, which was brought to the fore in one of the festival’s first sessions. A guided tour of a number of pieces at the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) was led by the director of MAMA, and focused on the subtle hints of disturbance or unsettling hidden within them. The first piece, from Bill Henson, is a photograph of a young boy. In the photograph, Henson uses lighting to convey a sense of quiet contemplation. The boy is photographed without a shirt, leading the viewer to take a somewhat cautious stance on the true nature of the photograph. The boy gazes out into the darkness, with an almost ghostly lack of pigmentation contrasting with the darkness to create a sense of conflict.

The next piece, Heart Attack from Tracy Moffat, showed a young girl with a man in the privacy of a bedroom. In this photograph, the viewer is placed outside the room and viewing the subjects from behind, almost as though they are peering through the door. This gives the viewer an immediate sense of voyeurism, creating the feeling of unsettling. As the man is without clothes, and appears to be grabbing the young girl, the viewer becomes more unsettled. Of course a simple, innocent explanation for this may be that this is a father-daughter relationship and the father is helping the girl change clothes. Whatever the case, the imagery presented truly does unsettle the viewer.

The final pieces, a two painting series, present a therapy session. These two paintings form a series, and again create a sense of unsettling throughout subtle imagery. From the man’s forlorn look in one piece to the sense of grief inspired by the women in the other, these pieces appear to detail a troubled relationship. Perhaps this man has had an affair, the two women being his wife and her sister. Are they simply going through marriage counselling to address early difficulties? Or maybe this man is seeking help to deal with mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression or a substance abuse disorder.

Once again, these pieces are all connected through an underlying theme of unsettling. This sense of disturbance is created through subtle visual cues, and is done in such a way that it makes it difficult for the viewer to put their finger on exactly what is causing the sense of unsettling. Thanks go to the MAMA director for giving an excellent guided tour of these pieces, MAMA for putting on the exhibit and the organisers of WAM for making it all possible.