Hot Not, 2006, single channel digital video, duration: 03:17
About the work
My performance videos are invested with ideas of human weakness and self- consciousness. These works are engaged in an amateur use of video technology to present an honest, unadorned account of the psychological struggles and battles of the artist. Using the personal as raw material, I explore the territory surrounding the construction of the surface, of conflicted desire as played out both for the camera and behind the scenes. I’m interested in questioning aesthetic values and hierarchies, combining controlled, pre-meditated decision-making with risk, improvisation and intuition, and walking a fine line between success and failure.
In Hot Not, the artist, dressed in a gym outfit with bare face and unkempt hair, dances and poses in front of the window of her suburban house whilst mouthing selected lines from the recent Pussycat Dolls’ pop song ‘Don’tcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me’. Initially displaying all the confidence of an amateur aspirant, there comes a moment when the excruciatingly self-critical realisation hits her that she is not, in fact, ‘hot’ like a Pussycat Doll and far from believing that ‘you’ would wish your girlfriend was hot like ‘me’, she is full of self-disgust and disappointment at her far from music-video-ready body. The scene fades to black as she slumps closer to the window, her body engulfing the screen, allowing the reflection of the video camera to appear against it in the grubby windowpane.
The work operates as a critique of female representation and objectification in current popular culture, revealing a psychological battle with self-reflection.
About the artist
Born Singapore 1970
Lives & works Sydney
Rachel Scott is a visual artist working across the mediums of video, performance, painting and installation. She graduated in 2005 with a Master of Visual Arts from the Sydney College of the Arts and in 2007 she was the recipient of the Fauvette Loureiro Travelling Artist Scholarship and was Highly Commended in the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship exhibition at Artspace, Sydney. Selected solo exhibitions include MOP (2007), Peloton (2007), and James Dorahy Project Space (2006). Selected group exhibitions and screenings include: between you and me, Firstdraft Gallery (2007), Videobrasil, São Paolo, Brazil (2007), Projector, Fremantle Arts Centre, Western Australia (2007), Four Gallery Dublin (2007), The Norwegian Short Film Festival, Grimstad, Norway (2006), and the Parallel Program of the Biennale of Sydney, Phatspace (2004). In 2007 Her work was featured in the Art Life television series on the ABC, and in the Australian Art Collector magazine’s ‘Undiscovered’ section.
Rachel has been actively involved in artist-run initiatives such as runway magazine and has worked as a casual lecturer in the Painting Department at the Sydney College of the Arts.
Exhibition catalogue