Born Adelaide, South Australia
1974-77 Graduated South Australian School of Art, Adelaide
Annette Bezor is one of Australia's most respected and successful artists. Over many years, her work has changed and developed, though it has always been of immense conceptual and technical strength. She has been principally a painter - exclusively so in recent years. Her painting has addressed female sexuality, the politics of gender, the use of symbols and the symbolic power of the image.
The classical and the modern images Bezor uses all idealise female beauty. They have become iconic, epitomising the objectification of the female in Western art over centuries, and also shaping society's perceptions of women and race, and constructions of gender, society and power.
Bezor's paintings thus raise many complex and contentious issues. We are reminded not only of how we represent women, but of how we tend to evaluate people through their appearance. We tend to be prejudiced against people who look different. The re-representation in these images prompts us to rethink our encounters with others.
Stretching the faces and narrowing the eyes recalls, for example, plastic surgery, the use of cosmetics, even the mask of the actor who creates a persona through facial expression. In Bezor's work, we see how we willingly manipulate ourselves to attain a different, ideal state, and expect others to fit our ideal. These faces recall the perfection sought by both women and men, without which, they believe, no form of intercourse can proceed. We are reminded that a person's appearance is so often manipulated for political purposes and that the public are thus manipulated. Additionally, Bezor's technique of representing these women has given them back their personal power.
These women's faces fill the canvas - lacking a setting or background, they are seen both as pure form and pure idea, as abstractions. Bezor has used a computer to alter the faces before rendering them in paint. Thus mediated by digitalisation, their potential is both emphasised and denied. The endless replication, manipulation and transmission of an image through electronic media simultaneously normalises its values and emasculates its power. Capturing an electronic image in paint ironically reverses the processes of propagation and mutation of the image.
But Bezor also uses repetition. She paints two, or sometimes more, versions of an image, and subsequent renditions of an image are often copied not from the source but from the first rendering. This process leads to an almost perfect copy, but there are subtle changes. Repetition raises issues of authenticity, of commodification (both of the image and of the art object itself) and of the failure inherent in the concept of painterly verisimilitude. And repetition mimics the replicability and transmissibility of electronic imagery, doubling the irony.
By using painterly and manipulation techniques in Smoulder similar to those in Tension, Bezor expands her consideration of the depiction and objectification of women in the media and in art. In addition, she emphasises the question of women's sexual expression and their own desire.
Bezor continuously adapts the conceptual and technical bases of her work to contemporary artistic thought and practice. Her use of appropriation questions the status of the image and correspondingly exposes our assumptions. The impact is not lessened - rather the works are transformed into something else, standing both as paintings in their own right, and reflecting on the condition of painting and on representation.
Bezor continues to change and develop as an artist. Her present work appears very different from the work of the 1980s and early 90s, influenced as it now is by contemporary media forms and values. She continues to present complex, multi-layered work, which is at once relevant to wide audiences and which embodies her own beliefs and responses to the world. Her great technical ability and personal sensitivity are the twin vehicles on which such adaptation and development are built.
Extracted from an essay by Chris Reid, 2001
2008
Annette Bezor’s Big Heads. John McDonald. Australian Art Collector. April/ June issue
Crossing Cultures.Joseph Brennan. Australian Art Review. August/October issue
2007
Annette Bezor: Painted Women. Ted Snell. Turner Galleries Exhib. Essay. Nov/Dec
2007
Chris Reid. Florence Lynch Exhibition catalogue. New York Jan/Feb
2004
Face to Face : Rebecca Lancashire. The Age. August 14 2004
2003
M A Greenstein Florence Lynch Gallery exhibition catalogue, May/June
Juliette Peers, Florence Lynch Gallery exhibition catalogue, May/June
2002
Filmic Femmes.Sandra McLean.Courier Mail.January 26 2002
David Broker,IMA catalogue essay.Brisbane,February 2002
Bold and Beautiful. Phil Brown.Brisbane News.February
Filmic thematic at IMA. Barbara Bolt. Real Time. April/May
Survey of SA talent. Wendy Walker. The Advertiser, 7 August
2001
The gaze of Aphrodite.Karen Kissane. The Age. September 23 2000
Divide Bridged.Wendy Walker. The Advertiser, January 222001
2000
A Passionate Gaze.Richard Grayson.Monograph text.
1999
Panoramic perspective of artist’s state. Peter ward. The Australian. July 30 1999
SurFace Tension, Chris Reid,Catalogue essay .Robert Lindsay Gallery
Thoughts on Dust, Anton Hart. Robert Lindsay Gallery
1996
Richard Grayson, Blind,Greenaway Art Gallery, ARCO‚ 96 Catalogue
1995
Richard Grayson, Robert Lindsay Gallery Catalogue, February
1992
Charles Green, Annette Bezor, Artforum, April
Felicity Fenner, Sexuality in the work of six contemporary women painters,Art and Australia, Volume 30, No. 1, Spring
Sandy Kirby, Sight Lines - Women‚s Art and Feminist Perspectives in Australia. Craftsman House.
1991
Jyanni Steffensen, A Desire of One‚s Own: The Politics and Poetics of Female (Erotic) Representation in Annette Bezor Paintings, Annette Bezor 1980-1991, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide
Timothy Morrell, Ecstasy/Excess, Annette Bezor 1980-1991, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide
Christopher Heathcote, Art is the Cinderella of yet another Melbourne Festival,The Age,18th September
Christopher Heathcote, Reviews, The Age 25th September
1990
Timothy Morrell, Ecstasy/Excess: Annette Bezor, Art & Australia,
1989
Annette Bezor, The Australian Magazine 25th March
Ashley Crawford, The bare kitsch of Bezor‚s women. The Herald 18th July
Ronald Miller, Using black at its best, The Herald 8th August
1988
Elwyn Lynn, Unusual Woman. Weekend Australian 13th March
John Neylon, Staying on the Edge. The Adelaide Review, August
1987
Elaine Merkus, Here and There,. Monash University Gallery, Melbourne,Vic.
1986
Elizabeth Gertsakis, Heads above water:, Ex.Cat. Fine Arts Gallery, University of Tasmania, Hobart
Neville Weston, Bezor keeps her head above water. The Advertiser 24th Apl.
1983
Robert Lindsay, Against the Wall: Young Contemporary Artists selected from the Michell Endowment of the National Gallery of Victoria (broadsheet catalogue)
Bernice Murphy, Australian Perspecta 83, Art Gallery of N.S.W.,Sydney
Neville Weston, Eve‚s symbolic garden The Advertiser 26thOct., Adelaide
1981
The Editors Who are Australias Young Artists? Vogue Living, April/May
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