Practice of Mary MacDougall
(Weegee)
Weegee (aka Arthur Felig), a poor immigrants’ son turned famous New York photographer was well aware of the allure and effectiveness of transformation. Apparently, he used to change the captions of his photographs, recycling his images with new stories in order to sell them on to different publications.2
He understood that the image could stay the same, however perception of the image could be changed again and again to create new possibilities for his viewers – and ultimately, profit for himself. For Weegee, appearances and meanings were slippery, interchangeable and endless.
Like Weegee, Mary MacDougall is interested in the translation of photographic images, and shares his appreciation for strange displays of theatricality.
Earlier this year MacDougall painted a series of images of Phil Spector during his notorious 2008 court appearances where he dressed in ridiculous, almost cartoon-like attire. There was something fascinating in the way that he presented himself – each outfit displayed effort, imagination and high regard for appearances and while his costume changed, his strangely blank expression seemingly never did. It wasn’t so much his crime or persona that interested the artist, but the weirdly appealing spectacle of his continual transformation.3
Transformation and translation are key ideas explored in MacDougall’s practice. The images in her paintings begin as photographs either found online – often in newspapers, or taken herself with pieces of textured glass placed over the lens of her camera. Many of the paintings in this exhibition are from photographs of the artist’s friends playfully making shapes with their bodies. Other paintings are from photographs of strangers. From distorted pictures where the singular perspective of the lens has been disrupted by undulating, patterned glass, strange shapes appear. These forms are then translated into paintings and through this painting process a series of inversions and contradictions become apparent.
By painting onto glass, an understanding of linear progression is gently confused. All of the marks made by MacDougall are visible and equal, from an initial sketch, to the filling in of the work with smudges of colour made unpredictable due to the slippery nature of oil on glass. As the artist pointed out, the paint can also easily be scraped off, making the process both fragile and easy – the artist has less to lose and more to play with when there’s an inherent experience of chance and when unwanted marks can be vanished.4
The works offer countless possibilities. As paintings, they mimic photography with the painted image presented for us to look at through the smooth surface of glass, like the lens of a camera, or a computer screen – albeit without a frame, which only heightens a feeling of fleeting light and spaciousness. Using glass offers the opportunity to trace images or make prints. The paintings can also be viewed as sculptural objects, lined up in a deadpan row on a plain white shelf suggestive of a museum exhibit.
This element of display or theatre is an important aspect of Mary’s work. There’s the strange comedy and performance of Phil Spector in costume at his court appearances, the rizo-copied poster of a distorted boat – a lonely vessel for adventure or the stage for rich- playthings posing, and then the image reproduced in the exhibition catalogue of Mary’s brother dressed wearing all of her jewellery – a ridiculous or perhaps banal moment of sibling shenanigans that suggests and recognises that photographic images are staged, ridiculous and magic things and that there’s a fine line between mundanity and wonder.
Elise Routledge, 2009
Published to accompany the exhibition Soft Glue, Sydney and Melbourne, 2009
1 Arthur Felig, Weegee by Weegee: An Autobiography, New York: Ziff-Davos Publishing Company, 1961, p. 52
2 Virginia Heckert, ‘Weegee’s Story’, Weegee’s Story: From the Berinson
3 Phil Spector is an American music producer and songwriter, charged in 2009 with the murder of actress Lana Clarkson.
4 Conversation with the artist, 27 August 2009