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Lot Essay
see: Australia Arco 2002, Sydney, 2002, illus. p. 6 for another example of this image.
A smaller example of this image won the RAKA Award, held at the Ian Potter Museum, in 1996-97 and was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne for its collection.
The photographic image used in Sexy and Dangerous was taken from a nineteenth century archive of anthropological studies. Brook inscribes the body of an historical Western conception of the 'primitive' with simulated body paint, and both Mandarin and English texts. The confusion of cultural messages which this process produces thus savagely undercuts the simplistic notion of the racial stereotype upon which the original image was premised.
A smaller example of this image won the RAKA Award, held at the Ian Potter Museum, in 1996-97 and was acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne for its collection.
The photographic image used in Sexy and Dangerous was taken from a nineteenth century archive of anthropological studies. Brook inscribes the body of an historical Western conception of the 'primitive' with simulated body paint, and both Mandarin and English texts. The confusion of cultural messages which this process produces thus savagely undercuts the simplistic notion of the racial stereotype upon which the original image was premised.