The title of David Rosetzky’s major survey exhibition ‘Plural Selves’ is inspired by an essay written by Dr Anne Marsh, a leading contemporary art historian, independent researcher and art critic based in Melbourne. Dr Marsh was invited to speak at the exhibition’s official opening at Hawthorn Arts Centre on 16 August and her insightful words are shared below.
“This exhibition demonstrates the ways in which ‘plural selves’ have been engaged and represented throughout David Rosetzky’s career.
This plurality is a huge endeavour in many respects because it necessarily interacts with other fields and disciplines. The psyche, the mind, the would-be self or individual are well studied throughout western and eastern philosophy and medicine. Add to this the body, sexuality and identity and you get an idea of the conceptual range of David’s work. A multi-disciplinary practice that includes photography, video, sculptural installation, sound, performance, dance and choreography.
It's a massive artistic career that has contributed to the ways in which we understand ourselves.
David has always been engaged with the ways in which the human psyche works. His own personal experience, those of friends, family and colleagues have informed his process.
He is interested in both the internal self and the ways in which identity is projected, especially in the LGBTQIA+ community.
To enable a sincere and ethical approach and to grow the work, David has brought to his practice a gentle form of collaboration. This has entailed a conversation about our thinking and the voices in our heads that we engage with and that define us in many respects. Then there is the voice that speaks identity that tries to establish a truth to being who we really are. It’s a big ask for art but tiny miracles happen, people open up and voices are heard. So much of this practice, and its presentation in public – what we see as the viewer – is about enabling. It’s a kind of truth speaking by the one facing the camera.
This is true for Cate Blanchett in Rosetzky’s 2008 video portrait of the actor titled ‘Being Cate’ where she says “who I am is constantly shifting” – she’s not talking about being an actor when she says this, she’s talking about who she is and what she has learnt about self.
This is also true of the video portraits that comprised ‘Being Ourselves’ (2020) and ‘Air to Atmosphere’ (2023) where the artist worked with LGBTIQA+ communities speaking about their coming out stories and relationships with family and community.
As viewers and listeners at this exhibition, you will be able to discern voices of difference, internal and externalised, that range across a wide demographic.
There are the internal voices that often lead us to be anxious and fearful, distanced or distracted. Voices that appear to come from elsewhere and influence what is being said. The voice of the other – encompassed in parent/family, priest, boss/workplace. The voices of the social, corporate and religious sphere; and the voice of the media that is often used as a tool by these other forces. The bad other, the oppressor who creates anxiety, doubt, depression.
This all sounds fairly straight forward until we start to realise that we are the other. Our desire is the desire of the other, we want to be that tall, thin, ideal person. We want to be rich and famous for more than 15 seconds. I am inside of me and there I am the bad mother that oppresses me. Therapy 101! Insert your own favourite oppressor here.
What is amazing is that we are now starting to wake up to this. In many ways this is work that began in the 20th century through the work of psychoanalysis and its various trajectories. This research and practice seduced the Surrealists and continues to speak loudly to artists interested in the self, the unconscious and dreams. David Rosetzky’s approach is unique but it is not a voice in a cultural wilderness. It has enormous philosophical and art historical gravitas and is part of an experimental tradition explored through the arts over many generations.
In a hard corporate capitalist world that prioritises the rational through number crunching and statistics, human value is judged on the individual’s capacity to increase corporate profit. We are all slaves to this machine one way or another. But what is really sad and poignant is that we often embrace this we glee. We want to perform for the other, and, in that desiring moment we become enslaved. It is not only that we desire the other, the voice that often oppresses us, we actually take on that voice. The French Psychoanalysist Jacques Lacan, following in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud, famously said ‘I is an Other’ to explain the ways in which identity and desire are modelled.
These ideas support the argument that the individual is a split and fractured subject, perhaps in need of repair. However, artists and creative writers have played with these ideas through creative practices in order to emphasise the plurality of selves within the individual.
David Rosetzky invites the tangled web of the psyche into the safe spaces that he creates. It is a soft call that is characteristic of his work and it has enabled him to bring out the multiplicity of selves within each of us. The work asks people to participate in a way that most art does not. In this way, a voice that may be silenced gets a chance to speak.”
‘Plural Selves: David Rosetzky’ is on display at Town Hall Gallery from 13 August to 2 November 2025 and can be viewed on our Plural Selves online exhibitions page. Entry is free.