Zoom: I read that you began to love photography after having seen a photo by Jerry Uelsmann, that you like Surrealism and Salvador Dalì and that among contemporary artists the one that fascinates you most is Miranda July. An unusual list, decidedly “non-scholastic” and unconventional. In addition, your life has been unusual, with a ten-year career as a hairdresser More…
SOMEWHERE between the ages of eight and 10, Samantha Everton stumbled upon the work of Salvador Dali. Her mind was never the same again. “I started thinking in a surreal way when I was very young,” says the 37-year-old photo-artist. On the phone from her Melbourne home, she’s giggly and bright as a button even More…
Vintage Dolls is a show of thirteen carefully staged and immaculately produced photographs that explore themes of childhood, the uncanny and enchantment. Set in a world somewhere between dreams and waking, haunted girls inhabit strange rooms alongside shadows, wolves, dolls, and forests, where they morph into princesses, witches and prisoners. As unsettling and magical as More…
A golden-haired child lies resplendent on a turquoise bed – eyes closed, hair splayed – in a pose reminiscent of Ophelia slipping into the murky depths. However, standing over her with a porcelain doll in hand is another girl, this one wearing a ravagingly sinister wolf mask. Is this a childhood game? A re-enactment of More…
During the shooting of Vintage Dolls, film-maker Jean-Luc Syndikas was on the set to record the event. This is a short preview of his documentary:
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 More…
Could you tell us a little about yourself and your background? I am a photo artist working from Melbourne. I grew up in remote mining towns in central Queensland (Emerald and Capella mainly), I travelled a lot as a child, even having 4 months off school at one stage so we could travel right around More…
The strange thing about childhood fears is that no matter how fantastical or improbably the threat, to a child that fear is real. The fear is a happening, tangible emotion even if the frightening cause does not actually exist. The propspect of imminent danger, real or imagined, has the potential to overwhelm a child and More…
Meet Samantha Everton and there’s not a hint of her challenging, Gothic work about her. She’s a sunny, bright redhead and yet her latest exhibition is nothing if not dark, with a sort of tainted whimsy. Everton began her career as a hairdresser, but a creative life always held allure. After applying unsuccessfully to TAFE, More…
Nearly every child worries about not being liked, being different, or being alone. In Melbourne photographer Samantha Everton’s work, these fears blur with reality. These photos will be among those shown in her new exhibition Childhood Fears, which opens at the Byron McMahon Gallery on July 17. Taken on a medium-format film camera, then scanned More…
