I Am Heathcliff
Jane Burton, Photographer Hal, Lorraine Heller-Nicholas, Ms & Mr, Tiffany Parbs, Breyer P-Orridge, Marc Savoia, Simon Scheuerle, Heather B Swann
29 November - 21 December 2012
“Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but, as my own being – so, don’t talk of our separation again…”*
I am Heathcliff explores passion, obsessive desire and the destructive and pathological loss of self that can come with loving another. Evoking tropes of cinematic and literary romance, the exhibition celebrates love in an extreme form and explores the compulsion to merge identities with a loved one.
Some of the artists within the exhibition approach the symbiotic melding of identities as a positive act constituting a personal evolution of sorts. Others critique romance narratives offering promises of happy endings. Sinister, gothic elements runs through these works, revealing the sacrifice of the self to the couple and the dark side of romance as it dissolves into amour fou.
Breyer P-Orridge represented by INVISIBLE-EXPORTS, New York.
Jane Burton and Heather B Swann represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne.
*Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847, Australia: Penguin, 2010, p.96