Alfie Leahy, Wednesday 5th September

Exsertus Private View:

Alfie Leahy

Wednesday 5th September

6-8pm

2007

Playfully elegant whilst intoxicatingly sultry, Alfie creates stop frame animations of the female form, beautifully choreographed and composed with an underlined sense of nostalgia. This age old technique enables her to create a visual world of illusion where her subjects extrovertly prance through her make believe stage sets. Alfie’s films touch on the burlesque and cheekily cross the boundaries between art, theatre and fashion. Following in the footsteps of Leigh Bowery and David LaChapelle, her work is encapsulating, fun and gregarious.

There is a love in Alfie’s work, of possibilities, In each of her films she explores, the many ways a person can look, a metamorphosis of appearances, with the aid of costume, body art and movement. Her figures are like chameleons, constantly changing shape, colour and form. Presented with a panorama of characters in her work, we can wonder, in the same way we may view Cindy Sherman photographs, at the many different ways a woman can project herself. But unlike Sherman, Alfie’s work concentrates solely on positive projections, unswayed by the modern anti-aesthetic photography.

In the Exsertus space Alfie invites us to explore a series of experimental films working with professional dancer, the fabulous Georgie Leahy.

James Johnson-Perkins