2003

Anita and Beyond Penrith Regional Gallery; Home of the Lewers Bequest

Anita Cobby attended the Walters Road Public School in Blacktown and was in class 6A in 1971. The exhibition Anita and Beyond to some extent focused on the particularities of Anita Cobby and what happened to her. I wanted to focus on what she shared with us. In suburban Australia from the 1950s a common experience is the taking of the formal year 6 photo. This is the last photo before the move to high school and the transition from childhood to adulthood. The experience is marked by the shuffling into standing rows, the juggling of knees, elbows and bottoms when sitting in rows or cross legged on the ground. You may end up next to your best friend or to someone you didn’t really like linked by relative height or gender not affection and relationship. The photo as residue then sits somewhere most often in the bottom drawer of the parents. In this photograph Anita was the first girl on left standing in the second row from the top

In the installation a life size painting of the school photo as comic was hung from the ceiling about one and a half metres metres from the wall. In that space very bright floodlights threw the shadows of the viewers walking through the gap between the painting and the wall onto the photo almost replacing the historical children with the contemporary viewer. The space also became uncomfortable as the lights gave off a fair bit of heat. The cartoon outlines of the children and teacher in the photo could be seen on the reverse of the painting and the moving shadows of the viewers activated the space beyond being a static historical object.