Lisa Sorgini
Abi and Marigold in the Kitchen, 2020
11 x 8½" Archival pigment print
9¾ x 6½" Image sizeEdition of 22
Each print includes a certificate of authenticity, numbered and hand-signed by the artist.
About the Series
Behind Glass aims to offer a layered exploration of motherhood as shown during the months of the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic, as unprecedented stay-at-home measures swept across Australia and the World. It stands as both a creative commentary and an important cultural record.
Born of the pandemic, shooting began for the series as the first stay-at-home orders came into force in Australia. Making portraits of those in her immediate community, It’s a body of work motivated by a need to make visible the unseen role of parenting during such isolation and one that evokes a spectrum of deep tenderness, tedium, quietude, love, frustration, fear, and despair. These works present the light and darkness of motherhood during these extended periods of lockdown. Behind glass, mother and child appear like living and breathing masterpieces – divine comedies of domesticity.
Whilst informing of a particular time, these images also speak more broadly of the maternal experience. Its most blatant subtext is that of motherhood as contextualized within the modern western milieu; where women lie at the core of an intense inner world whilst continuing to remain begrudgingly detached from the outer as societal constructs and representations remain vastly at odds with lived experience.
Yet central to this story is also the concept of hope and connective awareness. Mothers joined through a collective experience. Through this work, the unseen is seen.
Artist Bio
Lisa Sorgini is an Australian artist residing in the northern rivers, NSW (Bundjalung Country).
Her practice engages with roles of care, maternal relationships and familial spaces and she is interested in investigating the dominating societal perceptions and constructs that are often vastly at odds with lived experience.
She is deeply interested in the way familial landscapes, particularly the mother role, look and change over time and the shifting cultural representations.
In 2022 she released her first book, 'Behind Glass', published by Libraryman (SE).
She has had works recognized as the winner of the Lucie Awards Portrait Project and CCP Ilford Salon for ‘Most Critically Engaged’ image, as well as being a finalist in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize (UK), National Portrait Prize (Aus) and the Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize (Aus).
In 2020 she was selected as the winner of the Lens Culture Critics Choice award for her portraiture series ‘Behind Glass’ and had work shortlisted for several other national and international awards including the 2020 CLIP Award, 2020 Australian Photography Awards and the Head On Portrait Prize.
Her work has been exhibited within Australia and internationally and published extensively worldwide, with interviews and features in The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, NY Times, Creative Review and National Geographic.
Lisa is represented worldwide by ACN Studio (New York) and is a proud member of Women Photograph.