Todd Gray
Photo: courtesy of the artist
Todd Gray
United States born 1954
Level 2
NGV International
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PROJECT
Todd Gray’s work the hidden order of the whole (Venus) is made up of four individually framed photographs that are layered together to create a large-scale sculptural installation. Including images of historical European gardens, ancient sculptures and a photograph of a dancer who Gray photographed when working with musician MC Hammer, the hidden order of the whole (Venus) seems strangely at home in the massed displays of the Salon Gallery. By putting together these seemingly disparate images Gray invites us to reconsider history, as he described it, ‘by juxtaposing signifiers of the West, signifiers of colonisation, and signifiers of the African diaspora I turn photography on its head to show that I am raising questions’.
ABOUT
Todd Gray works in photography, performance and sculpture. He received both his BFA and MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Gray works between Los Angeles and Ghana, where he explores the diasporic dislocations and cultural connections linking Western hegemony with West Africa. He was the recipient of a Rome Prize Fellowship in 2022, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018 and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Fellowship in 2016. Gray’s work is in numerous public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Bowness Family Fund for Photography, 2022