All Dolled Up

A derelict house is the setting for some stunning camera work, writes Harbant Gill

SMASHING holes in the wall of a house, ripping off the wallpaper and planting a tree in the living room were but small steps in Samantha Everton’s artful plan.

The photographic artist spent eight months sketching her storyboard, scouring through shops for the right props and finding the actors for her latest creations.

She spent months looking everywhere for the right house, then found it at the end of her suburban street.

“It was about to be demolished so I asked the builder if I could set up a huge theatrical production in his empty house,” Everton says.

“He was very excited. So was I. I had free rein to build the set.”

Everton gathered some men, including her physicist husband, to help with the tougher jobs, then moved in particular pieces of furniture and objects.

When the fireplace didn’t work in the shot, she simply bought matching wallpaper and stuck it on. Flooring not effective? She dragged in her own.

The lighting was crucial, requiring up to five hours to get it just right.

Everton then chose five children, “like casting characters in a movie”, to dress in intricate 1950s frocks, many of which she discovered in op shops.

The 10-day shoot has resulted in 13 large photographs for her Vintage Dolls exhibition at Dickerson Gallery.

“The house had this ghostly feeling and remnants of a past life; it juxtaposed against the playfulness of the children,” Everton says as we sit in her back yard under a chandelier she rescued from the now-demolished home.

“When you first look at them, you’d feel joy and possibly intrigue and when you look longer they reveal themselves to you.

“It looks like children playing dress-ups, but on a deeper level you see how they have absorbed what they have seen.

“I wanted to give a feeling from the child’s perspective of how they view culture. And also how they re-enact how their parents act, but in an innocent way.”

One photograph shows a girl pouring tea over her friend while a black cat leaps nearby. Another has an emerald-dressed girl pushing a child in a pram.

Children fly on wooden birds, sit under birdcages and kick up their heels. Mirrors reflect apparitions.

The hardest part was getting the children to keep a straight face while Everton went about conjuring her magic-realism.

The artist, who was a hairdresser for 10 years before studying photography, draws in part on her childhood with three adopted Asian siblings and one biological brother for her work.

“As a child we were just one big family. I didn’t see the differences,” Everton says.

“But as a I grew older and became a teenager, I started to see in other people’s eyes their reaction to us.”