Glancing

Glancing is an installation of over 400 paintings of individual faces. Each one, roughly life sized, is painted on thick watercolour paper in inks and watercolour paint. They are monochrome, some painted in black and white and others in sepia. They are attached, unframed, to the wall in a grid from floor to ceiling in two blocks with a narrow space between.

As the viewer allows his/her eyes to travel across the sea of faces, they will see that each face is different, individual, but that they are all engaged in the same activity, looking askance, to the side, across the room.

When I did Glancing, I thought the premise would be really obvious, that as soon as someone walked into the room, they would get it, would immediately see that half the faces are of women and half of men and that they are all surreptitiously eyeing each other up. But to my surprise it didn’t work like that.
At first the viewer seems overwhelmed by the sheer number of faces. They just look, taking in each one, perhaps looking to recognise somebody. It takes them a while to notice that half are women and half are men and then that they are actually staring at each other. I like this slow unfolding of the meaning of the piece. For me, the piece is about the process of sexual attraction, the undercover surveillance of each other that we all do

Tony White writes in the accompanying exhibition text: ‘Taken individually, the ‘portraits’ which make up Glancing prompt an unexpectedly emotional response. These faces transcend the generic and become characterful, intriguing. But by installing them in gender groups, on either side of a divide that is breachable only by the gaze (their own and the viewer’s) Stephanie Fawbert has also created a powerful and emblematic image. The glances are at once sexy, hostile and complicitous. With this starkly simple work, Fawbert seems to evoke both desire and insurmountable difference between the sexes.’

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