Tierney Gearon’s exhibitons include Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland (2007); The Mother Project, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, NY (solo show), Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA (2006); I am a Camera, Saatchi Gallery, London, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY (2001). She is the subject of a film, The Mother Project by jack Youngseison & Peter Sutherland (2007), and has published a monograph Daddy, where are you?.
Tierney burst into the public consciousness within a group exhibition called “I am a camera”. Her highly personal portraits of family life touched a raw nerve, by running headlong into the taboo of child nudity. While not the intention of the work, the controversy and subsequent press debate are revealing of the way in which taboos operate within the individual and society, creating irrational ways of thinking. It is interesting to reflect on classical sculpture, which has allowed us to appreciate the naked forms of man, woman and child alike since antiquity; If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too is depravity.
Tierney’s work is a candid and intimate document of her life, revealing the singular importance and closeness of family. In many ways they are simply family snapshots just as anyone might take, motivated by the human desire to treasure each and every moment; however they transcend the ordinary in their unflinching directness, managing to be simultaneously objective and intimate in equal measure. And their obvious quality, displaying a rare and innate gift for composition and a natural sense of occasion, of the essence of the moment.
What is clear is that, as the title “I am a camera” implies Tierney has, through its constant presence, made the camera a natural part of the family, so that it no longer distorts behavior - rather like a wildlife expert who takes years to become accepted by a family of animals. The results are utterly naturalistic and uncontrived; their fascination comes from an undiluted expression of genuine moments of experience, emotion, learning and behavior. Although a very personal account, Tierney’s work prompts us to be more aware of the iconic moments in our everyday life, which can become lost amidst the second hand and fictional world we inhabit.
