© Emily Portmann, Reflections

Emily Portmanns photographic series Play Terrain, photographed out on Cockatoo Island in Sydney, explores notions of role play, environment and self portraiture. As a self portrait artist Portmanns interests lie in the body, exploring how we convey our emotional and psychological states of being through our subconscious body language.

 Photographing herself as multiples within various scenarios and settings, the figures enact out situations and scenarios, responding to and against each other within the abandoned and uncertain terrain around them. The work explores our subconscious movements, heightened responses to flight or fight anxieties and the constantly shifting relationship we hold with the self.

 Emily Portmann is a Sydney based artist working with self portaiture and multiple figures as an external projection of our internal being and mental, emotional landscapes. Portmann graduated from the National Art School with Honours in 2005 and has exhibited around Australia in both solo and group shows. Winner of the 2008 Olive Cotton Photographic Portrait Prize, Portmann has also been published in Hijacked Australia and America.