Yvonne Todd: Creamy Psychology

Overview

If you’ve never heard of Yvonne Todd before, stop by Wellington’s formidable City Gallery from December 6, of which this New Zealand photographer will be dominating both floors with her exhibition, Creamy Psychology. It's the first time City Gallery has given over so much space to one artist, making this Yvonne Todd character a pretty big deal.

But who is she, you ask? Well, let us inform you. A respected artist internationally, Yvonne Todd is most well known for her use of generic studio photography combined with quirky elements of mainstream pop culture, producing off-kilter images that seem to possess their own mythology. Renowned for her images of female characters, Todd’s fantastical portraits are highly styled and work to produce ostentatious representations of melodrama in female characters, often with a complex relation to the ever-popular topic of feminism.

"My favourite author when I was twelve or thirteen, Virgina Andrews, wrote gothic tales of beautiful teenage girls involuntarily corrupted by perverse ancestral legacies. The artwork of the books added to this intrigue... like Hallmark sympathy cards, they possessed a combination of limp serenity and shrill unease." - Yvonne Todd

Showcasing the breadth of Todd’s work since the late 1990’s including a display of Todd’s collection of vintage designer gowns that feature in her images (some of which were previously owned by the likes of Liza Minnelli and Whitney Houston, no big deal) as well as work by other artists that are sources of inspiration for the kiwi photographer, including Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Mike Disfarmer.