Since the 1990s, the photographer Catherine Opie has used her camera to challenge and illuminate our understanding of the personal and the political. In what will be the first survey of the artist's work in Australia, Catherine Opie: Binding Ties is coming to the Heide.
Running from March 31 to July 9, this exhibition will feature over 50 key works by one of the world's leading photographers. Perhaps best known for her portraits of leather dykes, drag performers and trans members of her queer community in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the nineties, this exhibition extends thinking on identity expression.
Catherine Opie: Binding Ties will also explore the need to think collectively and work toward common goals of environmental sustainability and social equality. Expect to see Opie’s early and most recognisable works that explore constructions of gender and sexuality through alternative conceptions of the nuclear household. The exhibition will also feature more recent dives into solidarity and collective action in the face of global crises.
“The selected works demonstrate Catherine Opie’s mastery of photographic technologies and genres to offer us a heterogenous conception of human relations,” says the guest exhibition curator Brooke Babington, “one that moves beyond the traditional limits of identity as defined within and against the wider group, through changing notions of ‘family’, ‘community’ and ‘collectivity.’
A consistent motivation across Opie’s three decades of work, these ideas offer us new and challenging ways of thinking through the role of the individual in a rapidly changing world.”
Book tickets to see Catherine Opie: Binding Ties on the Heide website now.