MELBOURNE.- Referencing the heightened drama and saturated colours of classic Hollywood cinema, self-taught Los Angeles-based artist Alex Prager is presenting her elaborately conceived photographs and films at the National Gallery of Victoria from 14 November. The self-titled exhibition is Prager’s first solo show in Australia, and surveys her practice from the Polyester series, 2007, to her most recent body of work, Face in the Crowd, 2013.

Prager’s intensely emotive and technicolour scenes feature a strangely familiar cast of characters; predominantly women, immaculately groomed and wearing wigs, fake eyelashes and adorned in retro fashion, who resemble actors of mid twentieth-century Hollywood. Characterised by the use of constructed sets, dramatic lighting, costumes and actors, and packed with emotion and human melodrama, her work openly references the aesthetics of artists and filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Cindy Sherman and David Lynch.

Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV, said, ‘We are delighted to present Alex Prager’s evocative film and photography as part of the NGV’s contemporary focus over summer. We have acquired three major works by Prager, including her acclaimed three-channel video Face in the Crowd, 2013, which was exhibited to much acclaim at the prestigious Art Basel art fair this year. These new acquisitions will be shown alongside twenty two other major works from the past seven years of Prager’s prolific career.’

Initially working as a photographer, in 2010 Prager created her first short film, Despair, which the artist spoke of as being a ‘full-sensory version’ of her photographs. Complete with soaring string-based soundtrack, a large cast of characters and characteristically lurid colour scheme, it depicts a red-headed heroine, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who reacts to a clearly distressing phone conversation by propelling herself out of an apartment window.

Prager’s recent series Face in the Crowd, 2013, and accompanying three-channel video, examine the psychology of crowd behaviour. The series of photographs, staged to resemble specific sites frequented by Prager including Washington Square Park in New York, beaches, train stations, movie theatres and airports, were orchestrated on a Hollywood sound stage, and each participant’s movements and appearance meticulously directed to create a complex tableaux of fascinating characters. The film sees a female protagonist, played by actress Elizabeth Banks, move in and out of a busy crowd, appearing at times curious about the throngs of people and, at other moments, tense and overwhelmed.

Born in Los Angeles in 1979, Alex Prager has exhibited at museums including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and Foam Museum in Amsterdam. She has also completed fashion editorial work for publications such as Vogue and W Magazine, and her short film Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine and starring celebrity icons Brad Pitt, George Clooney and Kirsten Dunst, won a 2012 Emmy Award.