Bare: Degrees of undress celebrates the candid, contrived, natural, sexy, ironic, beautiful, and fascinating in Australian portraiture that shows a bit of skin. Bare selects and remixes portraits from our collection around elements of nakedness. Fun and forthright, the exhibition will interrogate our instinctive, embedded and complex reactions to the bare. Surprising relationships appear, including portraits of Australia’s greatest sportspeople and our foremost creative achievers.
Portraits of Billy Slater, Germaine Greer, Dame Edna Everage, Matthew Mitcham, David Gulpilil, Megan Gale and many others are on display. It is intriguing to explore the subtle but crucial differences between the naked and the nude, being dressed or undressed and seeing someone clothed or unclothed. Bare reflects on the decision to uncover part, or all, of the body in a portrait, which says as much about the self, personality, identity and character as a selection of clothing.
