Seriously Damaged by Attack (2009)

EJ Major won the International Salon Photo Prize 2011 and was awarded a solo show at Matt Roberts Gallery, London. Her solo show at Streetlevel Gallery was part of Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art 2008. Among her Group Shows she has exhibited at the Helsinki Photography Triennial (2009) Dallas Contemporary, USA (2008), The Minnesota Centre of Photography in Minneapolis (2008), The Australian Centre of Photography in Sydney (2007-2008) and Clampart in New York (2007). Her work has been published in FOAM Magazine (2011), Another Magazine (2011), European Photography (2007), Fotograf Magazine CZ (2007) and reviewed in Modern Painters (2008).

Venus Vanitas (2009)

I work with both analogue and digital technologies to create photographic constructs that are, and are not what they seem. These pieces aim to challenge the veracity of the photographic portrait finding an authenticity in a notion of self-portraiture that involves acting. Referencing both historical events and characters as well as those from popular culture, individual works have a narrative content but the work is predominantly concerned with ideas. The aim is to construct visually arresting images that can also be read.

In this series the Suffragette movement provides a fixed vantage point from which to explore the myriad issues at play in contemporary society. It also acts as counterpoint to my own confusion, a confusion born of fatigue at the information overload that surrounds the globalized internet generation. The use of archive images and text re-presents a past in the present and asks us to look again.

Shoulder to Shoulder (2009-2011)

In the series ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’ the Suffragette movement provided a historical context for the performance and investigation of protest and my relationship to it. This was explored with particular reference to the slashing of the Velázquez painting ‘The Rokeby Venus’ at The National Gallery, London by the Suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914. The event was used to examine my own confusion around notions of active citizenship, art-making and values, both economic and moral. In taking to the streets of London as a leaflet distributor and protestor dressed as a Suffragette prisoner, I was attempting to embody a sense of involvement, of actually ‘doing something’. The counterpoint to this was the internal struggle made manifest in Contact Sheet II and the constructed colour images, a conflict also described by Mary Richardson in the exert from her autobiography ‘Laugh a Defiance’.

Self-Portrait with Slasher Mary (2011)