“I am here”
Jacqueline Felstead
16 Aug → 7 Sept 2013

These portraits are of the residents of the notorious Gatwick Private Hotel. Here self-conscious residents stand with a blanket covering their face and upper body, standing as photographers themselves used to when they stood under a black cloth to better see through the camera lens. The hotel owner states: ‘Most [residents] keep to themselves, stay in their room or go about their business without bothering anyone…Most of the residents you wouldn’t know existed. ? Anonymity and invisibility are harbingers of social inequality in a contemporary culture that increasingly relies upon visual representation. To be invisible is to disappear. Yet to be photographed is to have ones image join a network of images, the reading of which is usually beyond the power of the subject to direct.

Jacqueline Felstead is a photo-media artist working with digital and experimental photo formats. Completing her MFA she also holds Bachelor degrees in Media Arts and Social Science. Felstead was awarded an Asialink Residency to Objectif’s Centre for Photography and Filmmaking in 2009 with the support of Australia Council, a studio residency at the Banff Centre, Canada, in 2005 and was artist-in-resident at Laughing Waters, Eltham 2009. She was funded by Melbourne City Council to produce work for Melbourne and Other Myths at Melbourne Museum at Treasury in 2008. Felstead has participated in numerous exhibitions in Australia, Singapore and Canada - her work has been publicly exhibited since 2001. Recent exhibitions include : 2013 - National Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; 2012 – Dots and Loops, Evans Contemporary, Toronto, Canada; Bowness Award, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne; Head On Portrait Prize, Australian Centre for Photography; Retreat, Global Gallery, Sydney.