This work was first shown in Layla Rudneva-Mackay's exhibition Tell yourself you're ok [Starkwhite 2008].
In a review of the exhibition published in ARTFORUM in September 2008 Jon Bywater said: "Cinematic' suggests too great a distance from the everyday to characterize accurately the kinds of simple tableaux photographed by Layla Rudneva-Mackay. That her scenarios--portraits of people whose faces we cannot see, for example--are directed constructs is evident though. Many of the large C-prints in the Auckland-based artist's new exhibition, Tell yourself you're ok, display gestures, but without showing us the people who make them. Most actors are hidden behind cloth, emphasizing something not simply conventional but still general in their poses. In this way, the images communicate an unusual sensitivity to form and its connotations. The nonverbal cues to which we might respond from the figure and their positioning suggest a level of intuition that evokes the unspoken sense of a situation."
If you would like more information on this artwork, or others by the artist, please contact us at starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
Image: Layla Rudneva-Mackay, Yellow Curtain, 2008, C-Print
