Butler’s Tray, 2009, Robyn Stacey
Chromogenic print 90cm x 120cm
Provenance: Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne.
Exhibited: Stills Gallery, Sydney 2009. Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne 2018-19.
Sydney based, Robyn Stacey is one of Australia’s most acclaimed photographers who has experimented widely with mediums of digital and lenticular works. Over her three decades of working, she has produced staged still lifes, drawing upon cinematic visual language as a way to connect with cultural memory. This fascination with the possibilities of history to inform our present, as led Stacey to spend time researching and documenting natural history collections and archives from museums (1).
Robyn Stacey's Empire Line collection, of which Butler’s Tray is part, combines traditional still-life painting and contemporary art. Stacey explored the collections of the NSW Historic Houses Trust, and from this, she laid out selected artefacts in lavish 19th Century estates to photograph. This butler’s tray is from Elizabeth Bay House and the image was made in response to the reality of life at the house in its heyday as opposed to the way it is presented today, in the genteel English tradition. Stacey's transformation of these historic spaces and objects allows us not only to peer into earlier worlds but also to consider the evolution of taste, culture and knowledge (2).