Named for its location on K Rd's red light district Topless (The Hustler & Superstars) by Jacqueline Fraser at Michael Lett includes a series of new work featuring all but bare-breasted women lifted from fashion magazines, enlarged to life-size, and meticulously adorned with luxurious French fabrics, faux fur, glamorous wigs, and an array of sequins, ruffles and jewels. Named for its location on K Rd's red light district Topless (The Hustler & Superstars) by Jacqueline Fraser at Michael Lett includes a series of new work featuring all but bare-breasted women lifted from fashion magazines, enlarged to life-size, and meticulously adorned with luxurious French fabrics, faux fur, glamorous wigs, and an array of sequins, ruffles and jewels.Fraser's vitrine-like frames freeze these elegant women in a world of their own artifice while simultaneously creating a viewing experience that encompasses the physicality of large-scale painting, the performativity of collage and the seductive high-finish of photography.

The large photograph hanging under red light in the gallery window prefaces these pieces with a cacophony of figures clad in leather, metal and bondage gear occupying multiple, surreal spaces - heightening the inherent tension between the beauty and fragility of Fraser's materials and the perversity she so artfully unveils in her subject matter.

Jacqueline Fraser's career spans more than twenty years and includes an extensive international exhibition history. Since the late 1990s Fraser has based herself in the Northern Hemisphere, dividing her time between Paris and New York.

Jacqueline Fraser was born in Dunedin in 1956 and graduated from The University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts in 1977. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Moet et Chandon Fellowship and The Seppelt Art Award at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art.

In 2004 Fraser was short listed for two major awards: Artes Mundi, National Art Museum, Cardiff; and New Zealand's premier art award, the Walters Prize. Recent museum shows include Superstars, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; Solo Didujo: Exposition de Arte Contemporaneo, Museo d'Arte Bogota, Colombia; Eventa 5, Uppsala Art Museum, Sweden, and the Third International Salon of Painting, Museum of Mexico City.

Image: Jacqueline Fraser, "Untitled" from the "Topless (The Hustler & Superstars.)" series, 2008, unique framed metallic photographic print, mounted on dibond, 1786 x 1285 mm. Courtesy of the artist and Michael Lett, Auckland.

Michael Lett from July 09 to August 09
478 Karangahape Rd, Auckland
Tuesday - Friday 11am-6pm, Saturday 11am-3pm

02/07/08