Gallery SATORI is pleased to present “Glam Shackle & Spice,” a group exhibition by six artists who explore feminine glamour, sexuality, and gender roles. Presenting both perception and perspective, the artists tackle the complex issues of beauty, sexuality, anxiety, power, and fragility in defining female identity. Portraiture is used to explore the multifaceted ways in which women are seen and how they perceive themselves in both public and private spaces.

Katherine Bernhardt’s paintings of models and music icons fuse glamour and chaos on a larger than life canvas bursting with vibrant colors, raw abstract brushstrokes, and dripping paint. It seems to present a love/hate relationship with the beguiling beauties she finds in the glossy fashion magazines. Bernhardt’s lush and almost abstract paintings are filled with cosmopolitan edginess, seduction, decadence and sensuous decay.

Bettina Selman’s translucent and ethereal paintings depict the sexual beauties formally posed in isolated environments. The carefully crafted but whimsical lines and broad washes that spread across the canvas create a dreamlike fairytale that is deeply personal while tapping into the inner most space of unconsciousness. They are psychological portraits of characters that are unanchored and floating in a beautiful nebulous background.

Anne Spurgeon’s performance based video examines the modern day obsession with the body image. It explores the personal and the public images that evolve from the ordinary to the superficially unreal. Spurgeon’s humorous and endearing take on the Jane Fonda exercise videos examines the anxiety and vulnerability involved in creating a self-image based on an almost neurotic obsession with exercise and trying to fulfill the stereotypical portrayal of a “fit” sexy woman.

Shannon Plumb’s compilation of several short film vignettes depict female characters in different situations trying to define oneself according to various notions of femininity. At once personal and universal, it is a funny, clumsy, and at times an endearingly humiliating look at the different roles that women take on. Plumb’s characters convey a sense of urgency, obsession, and a desire to emulate various social gender roles.

By isolating and heightening the tension that is captured inside the picture frame Monika Sziladi’s photographs reveal somber, poignant, and somewhat humorous narratives that relate to notions of femininity. Poised somewhere between a snapshot and a highly staged fashion shoot, the manikins become animated, bringing to the surface various possible personas, images of feminine beauty, and altered contexts that lay dormant in the show window.

Annysa Ng’s work embodies an underlying notion of a woman’s role and position in a male dominated society. As an artist from Hong Kong, Annysa Ng combines both eastern and western ideas of beauty and fashion in her black and white silhouetted portraitures. The blank facial features negate any notion of a real identity or personification. The ghostly black façade dressed in traditional Chinese royal garb decorated with phoenix and dragons and adorned with beautiful 16th century lace ruffs conjures up mythical tales of the past.

Using a variety of media including painting, photography, video, and film, the artists confidently tackle the theme of sociological ideas of gender, politics, and popular culture, and question gender roles and their influence on the creation of female identity. Like a glamorous shackle that glitters and sparkles, but at the same time weighs one down, the exhibition examines the conflict that arises when women struggle to fit into demanding roles placed upon them by society and from within.