Nudus Calendarium of Xavier Radic
by Dr Fran Marno

"Recuperating the space of seduction" (Teresa de Lauretis, "Sexual Indifference / Lesbian representation.")

If historically the dominant space of seduction is heterosexual then Radic's Nudus Calendarium challenges, reframes and claims that space for gay male representation. The images' power to seduce in Nudus Calendarium is a culmination of veiled, posed subjects, elusive, cropped landscapes and exquisitely presented prints.

The spectator is invited into an intimate space. The book/calendar format, hand sewn with black velvet ribbon, encourages both tactile (pages can be touched, turned, revisited), and visual engagement, while at the same time providing a private contemplative spectator experience.

Xavier Radic Calendar displayed in the exhibition

This calendar of 'nudes', a pose for each month of the year, is a thoughtfully crafted, technically experimental series of lithographic prints. Each one has gone through several processes involving photographing, darkroom experimenting with opaque materials and substances to create filters before exposing the negatives, scanning of these images to get new negatives then using that in the production of plates for final printings. This is an intensive hands-on art practice. And all the more impressive when it's non-digitalized, when computer manipulation had no place in its' process.

The decision to produce a body of work that refuses contemporary computer-based photographic techniques is based on research findings of techniques used by the gay German photographer, Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856 - 1931). Radic's models, all self-identifying gay men selected for this project adopted von Gloeden 's poses but, rather than inhabiting classical or urban settings, were placed in rugged NZ landscapes. The consequence of this dislocation results, in some images, in an awkwardness, a vulnerability that comes from being posed and naked in an unforgiving environment, in others the models dominate, the landscape is secondary.

In all of the 12 Calendarium images we, as viewers, are confronted with being outsider spectators. We can look but we cannot disrupt the preoccupations of the male subjects. They are preoccupied with themselves or with each other. Either way the viewer is the outsider, the fugitive and the spectator who is invited in but only partially.

Radic's calendar reminds us that images of the past can be appropriated to inform us of queer issues of the present.

Gay, lesbian, heterosexual, we are all part of Radic's viewing public and in creating works that celebrate both the historical and contemporary in queer visual culture we become part of that celebration.

Nudus Calendarium was selected for exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Gallery in New York in January and February 2008 and has also been selected for exhibition in June 2008 at the SomArts Gallery in San Francisco.

Dr Fran Marno has, until recently, lectured in the Painting section of Elam School of Fine Arts at The University of Auckland. She is currently the recipient of a post-doctoral research fellowship award and is working on a series of paintings that position older lesbians firmly within contemporary portraiture discourse.