During World War Two, the Australian government's Department of Information represented the male body in at least two distinct ways. The photographer Edward Cranstone photographed a heroically active, phallicised body and the cameraman Damien Parer filmed a heroically suffering abject body.
We collage, genderbend, cross dress and polymorph exquisite corpses out of media and advertising personalities, then use them as fantasy aids in the cause of our mundane desires.
Social documenter Maxx Image is obsessed with the colour purple. Black leather is the costume of rebellion and the thrill and valour expounded by such an ideal could be seen as enticing accessories to the passion and zeal of leather sexuality.
Analysis of maleness from a semiotic approach in the context of the lifestyle magazine 'Good Weekend' published as a supplement to both The Age in Melbourne and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Vigilantly looking out to sea, the two manifestations of the life saver, the saviour and the sportsman, are combined in this 'gay greeting card' in such a way as to draw on the history of surf club masculinity and create an erotic pose.
The images are selections from a body of work called flamingharlots@trashed, created by Sydney based photographer Natalie Lowrie. The images, digitally retouched photos of Natalie's circle of friends and acquaintances were exhibited at the Polymorph Gallery at Newtown.
Exhibition review Tradition, Cloth, Meaning: Contemporary Textiles Curated by Sara Lindsay
17 September - 7 October 1995
Long Gallery Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania
In 1992, Helen Moyes made a documentary 'The Back Yard Shed' which set out to look at the lives of a cross-section of Australian households through the phenomenon of the back-yard shed.
Let's speak about nomads and farmers... The acrid vapours that fill the cast iron nooks and crannies by day: the trickles on metal that appear in my black and white slides each night like blood from a more visible crime: this evidence of the distillation of men: these signs are signs enough of the collapsing consequences of 'farming'.
Using illustrations from a technical manual of the 1940s `the author examines the working male figure in popular iconography focusing on masculine representation in the visual arts and its link to the means of production.