Failing, Falling, Flying : Rebecca Ann Hobbs

ST PAUL St is proud to announce the upcoming exhibition by photographer Rebecca Ann Hobbs Failing, falling, flying, from July 1 – July 31, 2010.  Having worked extensively in Australia and California, Hobbs’ exhibition at ST PAUL St represents the first major showing of her work in New Zealand.

Hobbs’ photographs freeze movement, leaving us with the surreal and awkward instant when an animated thing is paused in mid-flight, mid-fall or mid-bang.  For example, in her recent New Zealand work a figure falls down the stairs in Spin (2006), another clings to the top of a Cabbage Tree in High (2006). The works depict scenarios which are both carefree and danger full, where the frozen moment is used to capture the riskiness of play and the absurdity of a situation.

In contrast her video works explore the conventions of cinema through the circling camera and the moving form.  Her compelling video Ah-round (2008) lampoons our notions of the romantic ‘Other’ with this circling, the camera motion revealing satellite dishes, urban brick houses, a polo shirt, and a man-made ceiling in the “jungle” of potted plants in a greenhouse.

Rebecca Hobbs first came to public attention in 2001 with her photographic series Suck Roar a collection of staged self-portraits with animals. She was the recipient of Australia’s premier graduate award, the Samstag Scholarship in 2002, a finalist in the 2009 Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award and has work in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia. She has exhibited extensively in Australia including at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen and the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. Rebecca Ann Hobbs is a lecturer at Manukau Institute of Technology