Natasha Walsh is a finalist in the 2023 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW with her work Dear Ben, The Scream (After Pope Innocent).
Put simply this work looks at our external perception of another person vs their internal experience. I am speaking to the role of the mirror in my practice as a vehicle for looking into this inner world. The viewer can only see the depiction of this private unedited imperfect representation of my internal self through an actual mirror, in the same way I can only see the outside through a mirror. It is titled references that this is a painted letter addressed to the artist Ben Quilty. Ben was the first person who really saw something interesting/worthwhile in my intimate copper self-portraits.
The other-side of the work is a reworking of the image of the scream, which has travelled through the work of Edvard Munch, to Francis Bacon to Ben’s own body of work. The work looks at the way artists build on the work of the past in a visual conversation across time. I have always seen the scream as a representation of the absurdity of life however I am aware that in depicting it this in the context of my sex as a woman, it may be seen as simply madness or Hysteria.
