No futile exhibit
The controversial artist has been exhibiting here for more than ten years and An Exercise in Futility, opens at Photospace, the gallery that has exhibited her work since she finished art school.
Deluxe first gained national attention due to what she coined ‘cerebral feminist erotica’, work that gained her an artist’s residency and internship at New York’s Museum of Sex in 2008.
The nudity has gone, but sex is still present in her work in a symbolic rather than fleshy form. In An Exercise of Futility she takes on the themes of loss and materialism, suffering and disillusionment portrayed in large scale glossy photographs with inky black backgrounds. Her new series of work is drawn from Dutch memento mori and vanitas paintings of the 17th century. Traditional memento mori elements are mimicked in her photographs, such as the human skull, but new symbols such as a pill container and a bar of dried up soap are introduced.
“I think the mix of beauty and despair is strangely intoxicating and a relief from the shallowness of the season,” she says.
Deluxe leaves Wellington to take on the role of a collections technician at the Auckland Museum.
An Exercise in Futility, photographs by Siren Deluxe, Photospace Gallery, from December 9.









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