Polly Borland on nude selfies, ageing and having the Queen in her loo
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Acclaimed Australian photographer Polly Borland has taken shots of many people in the nude and now, for the first time, she has turned the camera on herself.
For her latest series, the 64-year-old uses her body as sculpture, literally squishing bits of it together to create slightly abstract, occasionally surreal and often playful works.
Polly Borland at her new exhibition, Nudie and Blobs. Credit: Simon Schluter
Nudie and Blobs, which opens at STATION Melbourne this week, includes five large-scale photographs that celebrate Borland’s body while commenting on the obsession with the selfie in our culture today. Ironically, it was only through using an iPhone she was able to get the shots, despite the renowned portrait photographer previously having zero interest in moving to digital. “I even bought a selfie stick,” she says with a laugh.
It is her first exhibition with the South Yarra-based gallery and includes two amorphous creatures made from resin – called Blobs 1 and Blobs 2 – in the first Australian showing of her recent sculptures.
Borland used an iPhone to shoot her latest series. Credit: Simon Schluter
“I feel like I’m very political, but I don’t feel necessarily that I’m consciously political in my work. For me it was more a play on the idea of the selfie and everyone’s taking photos of themselves. Everyone’s posting photos of themselves. Everyone’s using an iPhone. The whole age thing is kind of incidental, it was more that, you know, there’s something beautiful in these mounds of flesh. I think the age thing is obviously extremely relevant . and women in art and older women being photographed, you know, it’s not done in this way.”
It’s confronting to show your own body in this way, she says, but “I’m just doing what I’ve done to others . I was sort of scared to show the work here I suppose because it is quite revealing, [it’s] not flattering. It’s kind of playful as well, I mean, there’s humour, but it sort of feels joyous to me, like a celebration. It was quite liberating because I’ve always had body issues, not with nudity, but weight. I’ve always been a bit chubby.”
Borland’s portrait of Germaine Greer naked on her bed, shot in 1999, is one of the most well-known. It proved controversial when Greer later said she had been manipulated into taking her clothes off, when Borland recalls it was in fact the feminist writer’s idea.
Borland’s portrait of Germaine Greer, 1999. Credit: Polly Borland
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Borland was holidaying in the Greek islands when she noticed the incredible shadows her body cast on the ground. She started capturing those images on her phone and continued to take pictures of herself when she got home.
Detail of Polly Borland’s photograph Nudie (1), 2021. Credit: Polly Borland
Sculpture is the Melbourne-born artist’s latest passion, even though she realises now she has been working her way towards it for some time. It has revitalised her and ushered in a whole new chapter for her art.
During lockdown, Borland was trapped for 18 months in Byron Bay, arguably one of the best places in the world to find oneself in such a scenario, where she met and worked with the artist Karla Dickens, also the creative director of the Art Byron festival