'Phenomenal Home' / Marlo W [Interview]
Marlo W is an emerging photographer based in Naarm. Their new solo exhibition ‘Phenomenal Home’ showcases arresting portraits in soft, ethereal light that engage with the notion of the body as a home.
Delicate images of friends and strangers are awash with gossamer tones as models captured in intimate, uninhibited moments speak to the artist’s celebration of agender and transgender bodies.
Whilst navigating the familiar sculptural narrative of bodies in space, the work brings a new, more fluid lens to this recognisable form. Marlo invites the spectator to consider whether comfortability can be sought through human connection, changing the body physically, or “the space we call home”. Employing distortion methods including shooting through glass, water, or through a stocking over the camera’s lens provides distinctive perspectives of the body.
“Some of the images are free floating and speak to gender fluidity,” they said. “I like being tactile and hands on and finding new ways to edit in camera. I really love leaning into mistakes and the things that people would usually photoshop out, like creases in the backdrop, I leave them in. The focus is the person, the image, and the feel. It’s nice that there’s texture. Or maybe that’s my way of justifying my laziness.”
‘Phenomenal Home’ emerges at a moment where the home has been imbued with new significance. After a year of government mandated stay at home orders, the experience of being cloistered has prompted discussions of entrapment and isolation on an unprecedented scale. For Marlo, lockdown brought a yearning for community and queer connection.
“Isolation and lockdown really helped solidify the importance of connection with other people. There’s that theory that everyone’s going to become a romantic after the pandemic. I just wanted to connect with people and with my body as much as I could,” Marlo said.
In documenting their body throughout their transition, Marlo found a way to use their creative practice to slow down, sit with themselves and reflect on their body.
“I was in the really early stages of transitioning, and it was really nice to have that moment by myself. I didn’t have to go out into the world when I was feeling at my most vulnerable. But at the same time, it was the opposite, I wanted to go out into the world and present my true self. Like hey, this is me, and it was an exciting thing.”
This sentiment is clear in their work, which honours their subjects’ bodies through a tender gaze.
As part of the work, Marlo responds to six of Lia Dewey Morgan’s tanka poems. Dewey Morgan is a Naarm-based queer creative whose work, like Marlo’s, contemplates the body with compassion and reckons with the emotional journey of transitioning.
“Now that my lonely
moments in bed yearning
your body against mine
are mandated by law,
they don’t feel so special”
- Lia Dewey Morgan (@bb_fuckacino)
The two artists' works complement each other strikingly, with Marlo’s photographs adding nuance to Dewey Morgan’s playful words. Indeed, Marlo says the cheeky quality of the poems prompted them to experiment with new ways of photographing.
“Her work forced me to take photos in a different way to my typical style. More erotic and sexual because I don’t really see my work as sexualised. It was liberating to be more dominant because a lot of my work is predominately anonymous in nature, looking away from the lens. It was the first time that I was directly looking into the lens, standing tall and proud, being more sexual. That was a good experience,” Marlo said.
More sexually explicit themes and content is something they want to explore in depth in future works. “As I become more confident in myself, I’ve come to the stage where I think this could be something fun to explore, especially since my work is so personal.” Wanting to come to terms with their own experiences of coming out as trans masculine and their interactions with other trans people is a salient point in their practice. “I want to explore a more editorial perspective, predominately trans men or transmasc people in a fun 90s erotic way.”
Despite the anonymity of their works, Marlo sees elements of their subjects’ unique identities peeking through the photographs.
“It’s those imperfections and the little things that you see of a person that can be really special. I think it’s really nice when you can see those parts and just accept it for what you see.”
‘Phenomenal Home’ is showing at Trocadero Art Space (@trocaderoartspace) in Footscray, until the 17th of July.
Stay up to date with Marlo W on Instagram (@cooloptimism) and on their website.
Article by Millie Costigan (@internet.millie) and Vicki Nguyen (@vicki_nguyen)
Images by Vicki Nguyen
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