eX de Medici: Beautiful Wickedness

45 44 EX DE MEDICI: BEAUTIFUL WICKEDNESS Eve and Rena (from ‘60 Heads’ series) 1996 Jamie and Doug (from ‘60 Heads’ series) 1996 In 1989, de Medici made I See, I Keep Quiet (Scenes from the Ivory Tower) , a collaborative engagement with patrons at Tilley's that drew attention to the complex issues surrounding domestic violence; this work was subsequently included in the inaugural ‘Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art’ in 1990. 27 As an act of bearing witness, patrons allowed their faces to stand in for the faces of perpetrators, victims and witnesses of violence against women, and, in doing so, their collective experience is inscribed in the project. The Biennial's curator Mary Eagle identified in the works ‘something raw and unfinished in the exchange between subjects and photographer’. 28 De Medici’s use of the photocopy as a medium gave the work a currency, eliciting a frisson of familiarity in viewers, while the performative engagement added a layer of uncertainty about the hidden nature of the subjects’ private lives, as identified by Eagle. Moreover, the ubiquity of the photocopy made the sense of concealed violence feel very real. The flattened images referenced the harsh lights of forensic documentation and DIY missing persons posters often seen in urban settings — consequences of witnessing, but not speaking up about, violent acts. 29 This work was the springboard for ‘60 Heads’. Between 1989 and 1996, de Medici collected around 400 images of the clients of tattoo studios in the United States and Australia. What began as the documentation of an intimate and bruising collaboration morphed into a remarkable exhibition when a selection of these photographs were printed as large photocopies. The excitement of the ‘60 Heads’ series lies in the sheer volume of heads and their ambiguity, both enabled by the photocopy medium. 30 But, as Eagle noted, these photocopies convey a relationship that stands outside the established tropes of portraiture, characterised by a joint production of appearance orchestrated by the artist and her subjects. I wrote of these images at the time: ‘The domestic quality of the photocopy only enhances the regular humanity of the subjects . . . with many active voices and many polyvocal realities’. 31 In this suite, the artist is enabler, not auteur — the images document a shared satisfaction in a shared creative act. The anarchic, punk, collectivist impulses that informed the artist’s use of a pseudonym, and her participation in Bitumen River Gallery Collective and Club Asbestos are evident in ‘60 Heads’. 32 The collectivist impulse comes from a deeply held feminist position, including a deliberate refusal of the trope of artist as hero. 33 Not all of the tattoos depicted in ‘60 Heads’ were inked by de Medici, but all those tattooed are collaborators in the process of the making of their inscriptions — the sitter has engaged directly in the co-production of their representation. This explains the unsettling quality of the images as the subjects direct our gaze to the sampled image now marked on their bodies. They are captured in the moment of presenting themselves and their tattoo, their collaboration with the artist. If ‘60 Heads’ was the culmination of a body of work that began in 1985 with (Wedding Cake) and (Pistol) , the series was also the pivot point for a new era. Something shifted in de Medici’s work when she printed six images from the larger collection of ‘Heads’ as Ilfochrome prints for the ‘1996 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art’; only one had been a ‘60 Heads’ photocopy. In these six images, now luscious, museum-quality objects, the raw ambiguities of the original photocopies are displaced by a new focus on the photographer and narratives of the body, representation and identity. 34 Then and now, eX de Medici’s photocopies command attention. They emerged from a process-driven conceptual framework, with strong anarchic-punk leanings, that continues to inform her ongoing practice. Through the ubiquitous mechanical medium and the degraded and impoverished image, we feel the artist’s voice raw with passion, representing unvarnished realities and connecting with her audience through collaborative image-making and the active production of meaning. The scale and violence of these photocopies take us by the scruff of the neck and jolt us into taking notice, into taking individual responsibility for enacting change. Their contemporary currency is a reminder that the DIY texture of low-tech, anti-Establishment engagement is its own reward. eX de Medici’s photocopies are the puzzle piece enabling us to see the conceptual infrastructure underpinning the artist’s decades-long career. Through familiarity with this aspect of her practice, we see her huge watercolours remade, their handmade qualities as deliberate a strategy as her previous engagement with the machine to connect with an audience to insist on meaningful and urgent change.