Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic

Melbourne : National Gallery of Victoria, 2019. Quarto, boards in dustjacket, pp. 144, illustrated. Fine copy.

Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic is the first in-depth study of the work of Australian artist Petrina Hicks. Since 2003, Hicks has developed a highly distinctive body of work that combines her background as a commercial photographer with her interest in art-historical, mythological and symbolic subject matter. This book explores the key themes of Hicks’s oeuvre through illuminating essays, accompanied by high-quality reproductions of the artist’s work.Threaded throughout the photographic plates are extracts of poetry by Sylvia Plath. The juxtaposition of Plath’s poetry with the plates highlights the poetic impulse of Hicks’s work, which, like Plath’s words, is undercut by a sense of strangeness and danger. Hicks’s ambiguous and allegorical photographs invite the viewer’s imagination to wander, and encourage them to make their own meaning.

Catalogue of solo exhibition held at NGV from 27 Sep 2019 – 29 Mar 2020.

An important monograph on the Australian photographer, sold out within a few weeks of the launch.