Transcription of video:

Hi my name is Gala Jane and I'm an artist and curator living in Lismore on Bundjalung Country. I have curated this exhibition Facing Scopophilia at Gallery 7 in Byron Bay. This exhibition has brought together seven incredible Northern Rivers artists to share their exploration of the objectification of women in our society. The word "scopophilia" is a Freudian word, literally meaning the love of looking, however when you contextualise that within the 21st century as writer and critic Laura Mulvey has done, it becomes more about the idea that women are sexualised, objectified and portrayed within film and television and media to be there solely for the male gaze. In her 1975 essay "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema", Mulvey refers to scopophilia as the pleasure of looking at others bodies as objects and explains that the world has a sexual imbalance where the male is playing the active role and the woman is playing the passive role, where they are the object of the male gaze, only there for the pleasure of a man and not in the leading role. It's easy to see that this idea does not stop at the edge of the film screen but it seeps into every part of our society that it's so ingrained in everyday life and has just become so normalized.

So I hope this group of work has made you think or ask a question or brought up a conversation with someone else. Together we can call this behaviour out and challenge these ideas to make a difference.

So enjoy the show and click on the links below to hear the artists talk about their work.