Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic (deluxe edition with signed print)

Melbourne : National Gallery of Victoria, 2019. Quarto, boards in dustjacket, wraparound band for the deluxe edition, pp. 144, illustrated. The deluxe edition, limited to 50 copies, accompanied by a inkjet archival print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag paper of Hicks’ most recognisable image, Shenae and Jade 2005, printed by Warren Macris at High Res Digital in Sydney, under the supervision of Petrina Hicks from the artist’s original files. The book and print are each numbered and signed by the artist.

‘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.’ – the gallery

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