Diana Baker Smith with Samuel Hodge
The Drama of Hands
2021
Pigment print on cotton rag paper
54 x 80cm
The Drama of Hands is part of series of works exploring the archive of the Australian artist, choreographer and dancer, Philippa Cullen (1950-75).
The work’s title is taken from a handwritten note Baker Smith found in Cullen’s papers at the National Library of Australia. In The Drama of Hands, Baker Smith holds a photograph of her holding a photograph of yet another photograph: Cullen dancing during her 24 Hour Concert (1974). In this performative work, Baker Smith responds to Cullen’s call for “the drama of hands” to reflect on her tactile relations to the dancer’s archive and embodied ways of doing art history.
“The doubling effect of hands holding a picture of hands holding a photograph, might, in a way, be considered an enactment of Cullen’s score The Drama of Hands. It is also a way to ‘touch’ history, drawing lines of connection between then and now. The lived and the archived interact here through many forms of again-ness: what the photograph of a single moment from 24 Hour Concert might have meant in relation to its specific context in 1974, and what it might mean for us, in the present.”
Bree Richards, Turning and Returning: Diana Baker Smith and Philippa Cullen’s 24 Hour Concert, 2021.
‘Tasks yet to be composed for the occasion,’ Diana Baker Smith, curated by Bree Richards, 2021. Installation view, Ideas Platform, Artspace, Sydney. Photo: Zan Wimberley.