Anna Gaskell, creates tableaux of preadolescent girls engaging in acts that reference children's literature, games and mentality. When alluding to a specific narrative, she isolates the dramatic moment from the overall plot. Her two series that represent this are Wonder (1996) and Override (1997).
Anna Gaskell, Untitled #26 (override), 1997. 19 3/8 x 23 5/8 inches.
"Apart from the fictional references however there lurks a disquieting sub-text often with sadistic overtones that centres around notions of childhood identity and transformation the transition from innocence to experience naiveté to knowing; suppressed eroticism and sexual awakening on the other hand are expressed through images of the fractured body." (postmedia.net)
Anna Gaskell, Untitled #60 (by proxy), 1999. 60 x 70 inches.
In Gaskell's style of narrative photography, the image is carefully staged, with a scene presenting the artificial set that exists only to be photographed. Her photographs are not linear by any means, but the events seem to take place simultaneously. In her Wonder series, her photograph "Untitled #9" shows a wet bar of soap has been dragged along a wooden floor. Later in "Untitled #17", the bar of soap appears again, as it's forced into a girl's mouth. There is a suspension of time, and a sense of obscurity with her actors' subtle yet suggestive actions, that creates a wondrous ambiguity which evokes a dream-like world.
Anna Gaskell, Untitled #2 (wonder), 1996. 47 5/8 x 39 5/8 inches.
http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_works_191_0.html
http://www.utata.org/salon/19597.php
http://www.postmedia.net/999/gaskell.htm
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