For our inaugral booth at the Melbourne Art Fair, we are thrilled to present a new suite of works 'The Sitters' by Ruth O'Leary.
Extending her solo exhibition 'Hidden Mothers', 2025, Ruth preents new work that shifts from the maternal body to the politics of looking. Using an analogue photo booth as stage, O'Leary creates portraits where her face deliberately obscured by painted textiles and costumes, becomes deliberately unrecognizable.
Where 'Hidden Mothers' centered on the torso as a site of maternal labour, these photos interrogate the role of woman as muse within art history. O'Leary transforms herself into anonymous figures, refusing the traditional dynamic of woman-as-muse, while examine the seductive pull of that very position. The works asks: What becomes challenging to look at and why?
Alongside the photographs, she presents a new series of 'Fuck Paintings', text-based works that embody the tension between refusal and acceptance, addressing the complexity of inhabiting identities that art history has constrained.