Project Room: Peeping Tom – Rozalind Drummond

About the exhibition
Peeping Tom presented a new body of work by Melbourne-based photographer Rozalind Drummond, extending her ongoing investigation into the psychological dimensions of voyeurism. Conceived as a multi-part installation, the exhibition unfolded as a strange and unsettling narrative that confronted the patriarchally constructed enigma of the feminine. The exhibition’s title was drawn from Michael Powell’s 1960 psychosexual exploitation film, which follows a serial killer obsessed with filming women in moments of extreme fear.

Drummond’s work for this exhibition began with a series of found in a junk shop photographic prints by an anonymous amateur photographer, featuring women in erotically charged poses. Rephotographed by the artist, these images were exhibited alongside her own photographs taken at the Freud Museum in London, as well as found objects or ‘props,’ including spy novels, forensic texts and items of feminine clothing. Through an act of restaging, Drummond constructed an intoxicating yet deliberately fragmented scenario: rows of female figures gaze out from the gallery wall to confront photographs of institutional spaces and perverse objects encased behind glass cabinets. A final element—a screen showing a real-time video feed  of the exhibition—reframed viewers as objects within the installation.

In Peeping Tom, Drummond ultimately confronted audiences with sociopathic modes of viewing: recording, collecting and surveilling.

Acknowledgement
Project Room was a series of annual exhibitions held in the Russell Drysdale Gallery at the Monash University Gallery that began in 1995. It was intended to provide selected artists with the opportunity to exhibit new or recent work conceived for the space and realised in collaboration with the gallery staff.

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