Cherry Hood

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Cherry Hood
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Simon Tedeschi
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Cherry HoodReviewer Robert NelsonNovember 17,
2004ARC one gallery, 45 Flinders Lane,until
November 27Portraiture of children is an
intimate genre. With portraiture of the powerful,
the more colossal the scale, the more imposing
and authoritarian is the image, so it's logical
that portraits of children are normally small.
Cherry Hood's portraits of children defy this
convention.Hood inflates the child portrait to
billboard proportions. Diminutive features are
pumped up to address a huge public space tender
eyes with innocent passivity present themselves
to a civic arena where they don't altogether
belong.
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Hood's technique is best realised in the works on
paper, in which the watercolour is built up
meticulously to mimic the lights and darks of a
photograph. But the aspiration to photographic
accuracy is cruelled in the last minute, as Hood
tips the sheet vertically, whence the watery
paint runs, as if the image is leaking.In a
catalogue essay, Anne Marsh observes that the
photographic origin of Hood's portraits,
confounded with liquid distortions, yields "a
kind of second skin through which the subjects
pictured obtain a ghostly identity". She notes
that the figures are "not actually there", but
are "conceptual phantoms like so many lost
children who will never be found".
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The air of missing children is somehow made more
poignant with names such as Bashir, Iqbal, Farid,
Beji. The dependent status of these little guys
is reinforced by the pathos in the title of the
exhibition, Ayesha's child. The way their images
vanish into the paper could easily allegorise the
fate of children who have disappeared while
seeking refuge.Mind you, no one has said this,
which is just as well - because it doesn't really
stack. The running dissolving drip is just
something that Hood does. It's a manner, a
rhetorical habit, a signature style it's how
Hood paints portraits, presumably to enhance
their interest, irrespective of the sitter. A
large picture of a fashionable blonde couple,
juxtaposed in lifestyle cuddle-pose, cannot
easily be about the unholy neglect of asylum
seekers.
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• Though formidable in scale, the paintings belong
  to the genre of illustration. They're pictorially
  bland. The vignetted format of the portraits -
  allowing the bust to dissolve into the background
  in an arc - belongs to old illustrations and
  amateur portraiture, in which relationships with
  space are evasively handled and forms bleed
  incoherently to the corners or default to the
  colour of the support.
• Although hyper-competent, the paintings are not
  entirely in command of the consequences of the
  scale. Some features attract untoward attention.
• Perhaps, because of their reflectiveness and
  naturally graphic outlines, the eyes are sharp in
  a way that doesn't quite cohere with the rest.

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• And on this colossal scale, we view the mouth
  with horror no matter what sweet little chap it
  may belong to, it's a terrible jagged mess that
  you apprehend with the kind of disgust that
  Gulliver observed in his encounters with the
  giants of Brobingnag.
• Photorealism at this scale is tense and
  apprehensive the artist looks for detail rather
  than form or structure in an attempt to caulk up
  the gaps in perceptual awareness.
• The drips are Hood's way out she relies on these
  chaotic elements to turn her illustrations into
  contemporary art. Standing before her wraithlike,
  equivocal pictures, you have to decide whether or
  not to give her the benefit of the drip.
• robert.nelson_at_artdes.monash.edu.au
• http//www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/16/11005
  74459661.html?fromstoryrhs

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• http//www.spangalleries.com.au/arc/artists/cherry
  Hood/ayeshasChild.asp
• http//images.amazon.com/images/P/0867196149.01._S
  S500_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg
• http//www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/11/16/11005
  74459661.html?fromstoryrhs
• http//images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurlhttp//w
  ww.artaustralia.com/issues/Vol41_No3_Autumn2004/ar
  ticle21_feature.jpgimgrefurlhttp//www.artaustra
  lia.com/article.asp3Fissue_id3D1026article_id3
  D21h185w365sz4hlenstart24tbnidW80q-E_9
  f9tCEMtbnh61tbnw121prev/images3Fq3Dcherry
  2Bhood26start3D2026ndsp3D2026svnum3D1026hl
  3Den26lr3D26sa3DN
• http//izuru136.cocolog-nifty.com/photos/uncategor
  ized/gottibertha.jpg
• http//www.jtleroy.com/images/HE-cherry-process-3.
  jpg