Margaret Dawson
Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1950
Interior with Venetians
- 1985
- Ektacolor print on MDF
- Gift of the Friends of Christchurch Art Gallery, 2022, in celebration of their 50th Anniversary 1971-2021
- 1010 x 760mm
- 2022/052
Location: Touring Gallery B
Tags: people (agents), self-portraits, windows, women (female humans)
Masquerading as women from 1980s Ōtautahi Christchurch, Margaret Dawson underlined the persistence of socially scripted roles – and their impact on the real women trying to exist within them. Interior with Venetians crackles with tension and constraint. In tightly curled wig and pearls, Dawson grips the back of a chair, eyes downcast, mouth pursed in a tight grimace. The world outside is strangely distant, sectioned off by the sharp lines of the blinds behind her.
(Dummies & Doppelgängers, 2 November 2024 – 23 March 2025)
Exhibition History
Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 16 August 2022 – 21 July 2024
Margaret Dawson has lived and worked in Christchurch since the late-1970s. Her work uses photography as a means to explore identity and gender roles through carefully constructed images of herself and others. Marching Girl and Interior with Venetians were both from the Dreams and Illusions series, in which the artist used her own body as a way to show the mutability of the self and representation. One moment, a woman in marching costume strides out of the photograph, and the next, she is an anxious figure shown in her domestic setting. Taking on these two personas implies that images we see of others are similarly fleeting and unreliable; that we can all be seen in many different lights and perspectives. Sword Lily (Gladiolus) further exposes the construction of the photograph, with the backdrop hung from the washing line in the backyard, as the figure performs a sword swallowing trick.