Entr'acte

Taking its title from the French ‘entr’acte’, meaning an interval or interlude, this video work by Gunditjmara/Djabwurrung artist Hayley Millar Baker holds the space of tension and release between unseen moments of action. Millar Baker describes Entr’acte as ‘a portrait of one woman, Clothilde Bullen, a mother, senior arts worker, and First Nations community woman, as well as a portrait of all women’. Noting the importance of this duality within the work, the artist has cast Bullen as both female protagonist and as a potent ‘vessel symbolising “woman”’. Bullen is a Wardandi (Nyoongar)/Badimaya (Yamatji) curator, writer and advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and the arts. Before taking up the role as Lead, Cultural Strategy and Development at Edith Cowan University in Perth in 2023, she was Head of Indigenous Programs and Curator at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Working across photography and the moving image, Millar Baker explores the way identity is shaped by experience and layered narratives of Indigeneity, womanhood, spirituality and the female psyche. Entr’acte exists somewhere between the formal boundaries of portraiture, performance and the silent moving image. For the duration of the piece, Bullen’s face is tightly cropped in portrait view – a framing device both intimate and claustrophobic in its intensity. Her features are in sharp focus, at times downcast and then locked and piercing. Standing in quiet darkness, the viewer is witness to an unfurling internal rage and grief expressed in the furrow of Bullen’s brow and lips closed in a tight line. And yet she remains on the cusp, at the edge of unleash – occupying that space in between. As Millar Baker notes, ‘Women are taught to reserve our emotions, be strong, and carry on because, ultimately, the world doesn’t hold room or reason for us like it does the man … here, in Entr’acte, you’ll never know the reaction chosen because witnessing feminine rage is not a privilege I’ve granted you.’

Purchased 2023
© Hayley Millar Baker/Copyright Agency, 2024