Australasian Beauty: race, gender and identity

Posted on 18 July, 2019

The idea of doing “something” with the film American Beauty had been “living in” photographer Andy Mullen’s brain for a long time, but she wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to pull it off.

“It’s a pretty big commitment in terms of rose petals, and staging it all,” she says, po-faced.

She isn’t kidding. Andy wanted to recast herself as an Asian Australian woman in the role of Angela Hayes, the blonde, blue-eyed teenager, who is the object of desire for Kevin Spacey’s middle-aged, suburban Lester Burnham.

She had an “abstract dream” of recreating the 1999 Oscar-winning flick’s famous movie posters.

The first, of a naked Mena Suvari lying on a bed of red rose petals, and the second, a close-up Suvari’s hand holding a single red rose against her bare torso.

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 1 [filmposter a], 2019, inkjet print, 114.9 x 76.1 cm.

“But then this opportunity presented itself where I had a lot of rose petals – someone was throwing out [roses], and I was like, oh my god, now’s my chance,” Andy says.

“So I got all these roses, stripped them all, stored them in my fridge with paper towels in containers, and I called up my friend and I was like, alright, I’ve got this idea, can we do this thing?”

They “raced” to the Australian National University, where they set up the shoot for the first movie poster in the Peter Karmel building.

“Which has this big bank of windows, which was hilarious,” she says.

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 8 [film poster b], 2018 – 2019, inkjet print, 114.9 x 76.1 cm.

They had suspended the camera and light from the top of the stairs. There was also a “big bounce board” involved.

While Andy posed for the camera as it “fired away,” her friend sprinkled rose petals from the top of the stairs on to her.

“It’s uni holidays, so not too many people around, but definitely people around, and some would walk past, and I’d be like, ‘Hey what’s up? Good to see you. Just making some art,’” Andy says.

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 6 [44:08], 2019, inkjet print, 45 x 80 cm.

It comprises the two “movie posters,” which hang on opposite walls of the space and frame the six “movie stills” of key scenes in the movie.

She didn’t recreate the scenes exactly but instead reinvented them to make them her own.

For example, instead of using “blood, or even fake blood,” to recreate the dramatic ending when Lester’s daughter opens the door to see his blood dripping off the table, Andy used a rich red fabric.

“I wanted to take away the sensational horror seduction of blood,” she says.

“And it ties into Vietnamese ideas of making and Vietnamese tailors and textiles and the colour of red, which comes up a lot in my practice,” she says.

The show also includes a video in which Andy has recast herself as Angela performing a half-time dance routine at a high school basketball game, a rose-petal filled fantasy that’s easily the movie’s most famous scene.

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 3 [6:55], 2019, inkjet print, 45 x 80 cm.

A dinner party was underway when she shot herself in a friend’s bathtub full of rose petals, with guests popping in to ask “Whatcha doing?”

A basketball game was in full swing when she filmed the video of herself on the basketball court.

For the “movie still” of her hand, delicately clad in a gardening glove and about to snip a red rose with gardening shears, she had had to clip the rose on to the rose bush in her back yard, “because it doesn’t produce roses in that colour.”

Friends pitched in with all aspects of the shoots, from loaning of bathtubs and clothes and tables, to holding lights and pieces of cardboard.

“It’s been a good adventure in making, and also because I’m without a physical studio so learning to have a practice that exists in these more liminal spaces is really interesting,” she says.

“You kind of realise you can pretty much do anything, and there’s not one way to be an artist.”

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 5 [37:24], 2019, inkjet print, 45 x 80 cm.

So why American Beauty?

Andy acknowledges that “it’s an incredible film and beautifully shot,” but that something about it “just hung around with me for a while.”

The timing seemed to coalesce when allegations of Kevin Spacey molesting and groping young men first surfaced in 2017.

“The film is problematic in different ways and you see that when you revisit it, especially in light of contemporary conversations about Me Too,” Andy says.

“And twenty years after the film being made, I was like, OK this is the perfect vehicle for me to discuss … race and gender and sexuality and identity.

“For me, it makes sense to always cast myself in those roles. Frequently I use my experiences as a Vietnamese Australian woman as a case study.

“But then I think also that my body is a perfect stand-in – ethically it makes sense to use myself.”

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 2 [2:15], 2019, inkjet print, 45 x 80 cm.

“He’s this middle-aged, cis-, het-, white dude, and you feel for him, he’s lost his way,” she says.

“He does things in the film that are outside of what society says is acceptable, but then you’re also positioned as the viewer to root for him.

“While you might know in your moral self that pursuing a teenage child is very frowned upon, it’s also almost as if because it’s forbidden there’s this excitement around it.

“You almost want to see where it goes. There’s this dark edge to it, where you start to entertain the thought of these problematic actions becoming acceptable, because he’s trying to find his happiness.”

She was also keen to flesh out Angela’s character more as the audience isn’t given the “full depth” of her character.

In an accompanying essay to Andy’s show, the arts writer Soo-Min Shim describes Angela as a “Lolita-esque nymphet schoolgirl … a plot device, a footnote, a human vessel for Lester’s desires.”

“As a viewer, you’re never really put into her shoes to think about how she would feel – she’s almost positioned as this vapid human who just wants to be interesting and look beautiful,” Andy says.

Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 7 [1:52:12], 2019, inkjet print, 45 x 80 cm.

“As fun as it was growing up and only being able to play Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels it’d be nice to have more characters,” she says, with a laugh.

She sees a similarity in the way Angela is viewed and the way Asian women have historically been viewed – and used.

“It’s this idea of Asian women being hyper-sexualised but also they have to be demure and submissive,” she says.

Recasting herself as Angela was a way to reclaim not only Angela’s agency and autonomy, but also her own.

“When you become a creator as well as the subject you build your own narrative,” Andy says.

“You write yourself into spaces that frequently, and maybe not even intentionally write you out, but just might even forget about you.

“When you reclaim that space to be your own, it’s less someone else telling you how you should move through the world, how you should look, how you should act.

“It’s about reclaiming space but also reclaiming power, so by putting myself in my works, and making that direct gaze back, hopefully it achieves that.”

the essentials 

What: Australasian Beauty by Andy Mullens
When: Opening tonight at 6 pm, showing until 17 August. PhotoAccess is open Tuesday – Saturday from 10 am – 4 pm
Where: PhotoAccess, Manuka Arts Centre. Corner Manuka Circle & New South Wales Crescent, Griffith (next door to the Manuka Pool)
More information: photoaccess.org.au/see/exhibitions/australasian-beauty

Feature image: Andy Mullens, Australasian Beauty 4 [19:53], 2018-2019, inkjet print, 45 x 80 cm.