Leigh Ledare

Working with photography, archives, film and text, the focus of Ledare's practice lies in an investigation of how we are formed as subjects, not merely at the level of identity but at the level of our projected desires, motivations and aspirations. These inter-relational drives often impose irreconcilable demands on the individual. His work explores these ambivalences as they relate to agency, representation, self-presentation, and issues produced by the enactment of his work in the context of the real world.

For his second exhibition at Pilar Corrias Gallery, 'An Invitation' consists as a series of seven works based upon a conceptual premise. The works incorporate techniques of photolithography, silkscreen and hand written text.

For seven consecutive days from July 22, 2011 to July 28, 2011, Leigh Ledare was commissioned by Mrs_____, a well known writer and the wife of a highly recognizable public figure with connections to the media and politics, to stay at the home of her and her husband in order to make a series of erotic photographs that featured Mrs_____ as their subject. The sanctioning by Mrs_____ to allow Ledare the right to incorporate the commissioned photographs within a new body of work was agreed under the proviso that the identity of her and her husband, and their respective families, remains undisclosed.

A legal contract, central to the conceptual core of the project, negotiates the issues pertaining to consent and non-disclosure upon which the enactment of the private representations into the public sphere hinge. The contingent elements within the project raise questions around how we are constituted as subjects through competing textual and social frameworks.