RAMSAY AWARD

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'VIEWER AS PATIENT'

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‘Viewer as patient’ is a performance piece in which Hewson invites the viewer to book in a 50 minute therapy session inside the gallery space. Previously performed at Mars gallery in 2018 (with over 30 sessions completed), ‘Viewer as patient’ examines the relationship between the viewer (in this case the ‘patient’), the artist (in this case the ‘therapist’), and the artwork (in this case ‘the sessions’). The painting ‘Family portrait’ hangs between the chairs as a kind of lone witness to the sessions throughout the exhibition. The performance creates a space in which an intimate socio-political Australian landscape emerges.

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Hewson is currently studying a program of theoretical and clinical studies in psychoanalysis at the Australian Centre for Psychoanalysis. She has worked as a support worker at W.I.R.E. (a women’s refuge in Melbourne), and has completed a level one intensive in Narrative Therapy at the University of Melbourne.

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IMAGE:  

'Untitled (Family portrait)'

oil on board

2019

SOPHIA HEWSON

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