Natasha Caruana

OPEN STUDIO PRESENTATION OF TIMELY TALE, MARGATE, KENT 14 OCTOBER - 10 DECEMBER 23

SOLO PRESENTATION OF FAIRY TALE FOR SALE, THE CENTRE FOR BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY, LONDON, JANUARY 26 - APRIL 22

RITUAL HUMILIATION

New work Ritual Humiliation

Love Bomb

Text and image work charting evidence of Love and Hate through a series of still lives constructed and informed by sourcery, chemistry and psychotherapy. Restlessly the artist documents her attempts to stay in love, searching for love potions on the internet then making and photographing them in her studio.

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Fairytale for Sale

In the series 'Fairytale for Sale' Natasha Caruana befriends brides posting their wedding dresses for sale online. The work uncovers a strange ritual of newlyweds masking out their own faces. What remains are bizarre theatres of marriage; white-faced performers have taken to the stage and act out emblematic scenes.

Married Man, International Centre for Photography Museum (project space), New York, USA, 2016

Married Man, International Centre for Photography Museum (project space), New York, USA, 2016

The Clandestine Purse

A single image created in response to the Married Man series. The large-scale, lush and glossy single image references Chaucer’s naming of the woman’s vagina as a purse. The purse holds the secret of the hidden sound recorder and motivations behind the men’s affairs.

Married Man

Over the course of 18 months Natasha Caruana went on 80 dates, never really being able to take more than a couple of images at a time to ensure her married dinner date did not get suspicious. The imagery is created using a disposable camera. This use of the snapshot connotes a sense of something being recorded that shouldn't be seen, hurried moments of an unfinished meal, an empty seat or an obvious gesture of anticipation.

The other woman

The series explores the range of stories and diversity of women whom have experienced affairs with married men – questioning the secretiveness and unease felt by the majority of them. Many continue with their relationships, some recognising it is a ‘half-life’; others enjoy the risqué adventure of their liaisons, whilst many have ended their relationships no longer willing to deal with the emotional instability.

commissions

At First Sight, Residence at Nicéphore Niépce museum, Grand Palais, Paris Photo, Paris, 2016

At First Sight, Residence at Nicéphore Niépce museum, Grand Palais, Paris Photo, Paris, 2016

Timely Tale

A lens-based work set against a backdrop of love, desire and health in the age of Excess. These topics are discussed in the artwork through the vehicle of the mother - Penny - and presented in the setting of a ‘ medical waiting room’. Viewers are transported via the waiting room into her bedroom through a short 360° film capturing: recuperation, finding the right outfit, storing medication and looking for the perfect online partner.

Divorce index & The Curtain of Broken Dreams

The two works ‘Divorce Index’ and ‘Curtain of Broken Dreams’ use open data to inform a visual and visceral response to divorce in the UK through moving image, dance and sculpture. It presents a couple in disheveled wedding clothes performing a curious dance at Hastings’ double deck promenade, Bottle Alley.

At first sight

Using photography as her tool, Caruana unpicks the personal experience of falling in love at first sight during her residency in Burgundy, France. In her search for the truth she turns to science, Mother Nature and other people’s accounts of this romantic phenomenon. Her work explores personal experience alongside investigating the subject through the work of neuroscientists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.