Vee Speers
The Birthday Party

Byron McMahon Gallery 26 September – 4 November 2007

In her highly acclaimed latest series The Birthday Party Australian expat Vee Speers has as Mathew Wood explains stripped away the stereotypes of childhood in a far cry from the usual idealisation of the ‘happiest days of our lives’. She reveals the cruelty, vulnerability and duplicity of children. She captures children happy to play with imperfection and embrace the grotesque; children with a sense of danger and disregard for the social expectations of a birthday party smile.

Speers has created a unique series of images where her child models take an active role in a bizarre and often unsettling “game of dress-up” complete with masks and costumes. These images, like the tonality of the actual prints, are ambiguous neither black and white nor colour, adult nor childlike.

Vee Speers was born in Newcastle, Australia in 1962 and studied Fine Art and Photography at Queensland College of Art. From the mid 80s she worked as a stills photographer with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney and in 1990 she moved to Paris where she works as a fine art photographer.

She has exhibited in London, Paris, Japan, Italy, Tunisia, Brazil, Mexico, Australia Ireland and the United States, and her work has been published on the cover of The Sunday Times, and in American Black + White, Fotomagazin, The New Nude, Shots Magazine, Australian Black + White. Her second book Bordello with a foreword by Karl Lagerfeld was released in May 2006 and distributed world-wide.

Byron McMahon Gallery
88 George Street
Redfern, NSW, 2016

Tel. (02) 9318 0404

E.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm FREE ADMISSION

Vee Speers

Brief C.V.

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2007 The Birthday Party Byron McMahon Gallery, Sydney
  • 2007 The Birthday Party Sirius Arts Centre, Cork County, Ireland
  • 2006 Bordello exhibition with book signing at the Stephanie Hoppen Gallery, London
  • 2006 Bordello and Parisian series exhibited at SandraByronGallery, Sydney
  • 2005 Vanities exhibition at the Marina Patrich Gallery, Goiania, State of Goias, Brazil
  • 2005 Vanities exhibition for the festival FotoArte at the ThomasJeffersonCenter, Brasilia
  • 2005 Une Australienne a Paris- Exhibition of 50 Fresson prints from the Parisian and Bordello series at La Galerie du Passage, Paris
  • 2004 Photography Festival in Tunisia- Rencontres de Ghar El Melh. Animation of workshops for children in collaboration with AGFA
  • 2002 Exhibition of Bordello at the PastRaysGallery, Yokohama, Japan
  • 2002 Exhibition of Bordello at the Ken Damy Gallery, Brescia, Italy
  • 2001 Exhibition of Skin series, La Tirana, Mexico. ‘Second Skin’ image used to promote the International Congress of Sexual Diversity at the U.N.A.M, Mexico City
  • 2001 Skin exhibited at the Alliance Francaise, Mexico City
  • 2000 Skin exhibited at La Casa Lamm, Mexico City. Sponsored by the Australian Embassy for the Festival of Light and Photo Septiembre (the month of the photo)

Group Exhibitions

  • 2007Australian Embassy in Paris, “Objectif Feminin”.
  • 2007 Work from The Birthday Party series exhibited at AIPAD, New York, with Byron McMahon Gallery in April
  • 2006 30 Days of Fashion, Hearst Tower, New York City. Exhibition and auction of 30 iconic fashion photographs for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund
  • 2006 The Portrait exhibition at The Photographers Gallery, London
  • 2006 Work exhibited at AIPAD, NYC, with SandraByronGallery
  • 2006 In the Realm of the Senses, Alliance Francaise, Sydney
  • 2006 The Body Familiar: Current Perspectives of the Nude, GriffinMuseum of Photography, Boston
  • 2005 The Photographers Gallery, London
  • 2005 Murmurs Alliance Francaise, Sydney, for Le Mois de la Photo
  • 2005 Women Photographing Women at Stephanie Hoppen Gallery London
  • 2004 The Photographers’ Gallery Summer Show, London
  • 2002 Festival Foto 2002 Portfolio in Piazza of Savignano ‘sul’ Rubicone. Works acquired for the Clerici Collection, Bescia, Italy
  • 2002 Exhibition of Bordello with the group Neobjectif for the Salon Comparisons, Espace Auteuil, 75016, Paris
  • 1999 Skin exhibition at Stills Gallery, Sydney

Permanent Collections

  • Clerici Collection, Italy
  • George Eastman House, NY
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas