Richard Kern’s Exhibition In Melby, ‘New York Girls Now’

Richard Kern, the legendary photographer, has a new book, New York Girls Now, the contents of which will be on display this week in Melbourne.

Between Kern’s fifty solo shows, twenty eight published books, work exhibited at MoMA, the Whitney, and his regular contributions to publications like Purple and The Face, to say that Kern is prolific would be to undercut the artist’s enormous profile. Kern is out there, and we like it. Now, he has brought his New York Girls series back to life, in collaboration with No Agency. New York Girls Now is made of twenty seven new girls, with the same contortion of “perversions”. The same guns, cigarettes and candle-sucking, looked at just a little bit different. The Now girls dress in bondage, little, nothing, like their ‘93 predecessors, but there’s none of the high key light or stylized drama, it’s all natural; realer than real, uninterrupted. It’s you, you’re the one watching.

Each of the fifteen framed peel and stick film photographs are a personal invitation, a private moment between you, the girl, the image, white space. But the double screens, larger than lifesize looping video at your back say, the party is over. Paranoia and hyperawareness are always the last to leave. What’s a “perversion” if everybody is doing it?

Attend the opening and see select spreads from New York Girls Now below.

OPENING: MARCH 21 6PM–9PM

EXHIBITION: 21ST MARCH — 13TH APRIL 2025

AT THE ABOVE

L1 198 GERTRUDE ST FITZROY MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA