This exhibition marks a transition from the documentary and figurative style that has characterized my photographic practice to a new approach, which engages with the body in relation to objects, language and the inhabiting of space. There has been a shift from depicting the presence of the physical body to a distinctive absence. In its place, the body is suggested and implied by the representation of its inner world.

In my previous exhibitions I focused on bodies in transition; bodies in states of pregnancy, adolescence, overweight, aging, illness and gender transitioning, when normative boundaries were disrupted. My works probed cultural taboos and exposed the body in various states of abjection. The images reflected upon the frailty and physicality of the human body; what it means to inhabit a human body; and to be the object of representation of subjects that are often rendered invisible and hidden from view.

The experience of working with people who revealed private aspects of themselves to me and to a wider audience, engendered moments of shared intimacy, emotional intensity and commonality between the subjects, the spectators and me. These were aesthetic and affective encounters and have influenced and changed my artistic processes. In this exhibition I aim to create the effect of intimacy by building a narrative through feelings and language that appear in both the present and the past, in an undefined place and time.

Scumbag embodies the language of emotional trauma and the inhabiting of domestic spaces. In its textual form, it is a collection of hand-stiched coloured felt alphabet letters that evoke a dialogue with childhood, materila\ity, and the sensations of touching and feeling. Pinned to walls in groups of phrases, where innermost thoughts are laid bare, they inscribe linguistically and visually, intimate aspects of identity that often remain shamefully and fearfully concealed 'behind closed doors'.

Scumbag, therefore, attempts to negotiate the disjunction between the public and private persona, as it is realised by the interior spaces of emotions and the exterior places of habitation. In this process of negotiating a sense of self through place, the body, both as a presence and an absence, remains central.

The exhibition is completed by a series of large colour photographs which reveal the placement of the works and phrases in the landscape of an anonymous suburban housing estate. The presence of the photographer at the site and the camera's "insistent gaze of absence, of testimony" (1) provides the evidence, acting as a witness to the imagined events.

The images further play with notions of identiy, creating a contested space between the implicit presence of a speaker and the absence of an identifiable person with whom to connect the voices. Neither age nor gender is identified, as there is no visible human being to project the words onto. There remains however, a strong sense of an embodied subject who inhabits the space with his/her own trumatic memories.

Scumbag represents a continued desire to visualise the unspoken and the unseen. Rather than using photographic representations of the body, it forges a new language of representation to register the experience of emotionally charged memories and the way "trauma is mediated to us in terms of embodied perception" (2).

My aim is to explore the capacity of art to engage the viewer in affective encounters that tread a fine line between the verbal and the visceral, the intimate and the mutual, the public and the private.

(1) Buci-Glucksmann, C., Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Images of Absence in the Inner Space of Painting, in Inside the Visible: an Elliptical Traverse of 20th Centruy Art in, of, and from the Feminine. C.M. de Zegher, Editor. 1996, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. p.281

(2) Bennett, J., Art, Affect, and the "Bad Death": Stragies for Communicating the Sense Memory of Loss. Signs, 2002. 28(1): p. 333-351

Dreyfus majored in photography at COFA in the 1980s, a decision that inadvertently saw her choosing between her mother's world of textiles and her father's world of photography, Dreyfus's earlier work focused on the body, in particular pregnant, aging, transgender and adolescent bodies. These black and white photographs, all of which are beautiful and confronting, stemmed from the artist's own life experiences and her propensity to step over the line from comfort to discomfort.

This discomfiture was evident in the 1999 exhibition Age and Consent, which captured the aging body, naked and unabashed. Despite the confrontational and challenging nature of this series of work, Dreyfus insists that her projects are "a personal exploration about looking where I'm not allowed to look and showing people what I've seen."

Taking her investigation out of the private lives and into the public domain, Weight and Sea, 2006, the first of Dreyfus's PhD shows, relied on the participation of the public to become the subject of the work. By asking passers-by on Tamarama Beach to step onto the scales and allow the general public to see what they weighed, Dreyfus took a very private act and exposed it for the world to see. Reactions of shock, relief, embarrassment and horror were recorded as part of the work; evidence of progression in the artist's practice and her subtle move from two-dimensional works of art into the realm of installation.

This progression continues in Scumbag, an exhibition which saw the artist hand- sew bright, colourful letters over the course of one year. These letters, which are approximately A4 in size, fit together to form words and phrases that evoke deeper emotional responses. The words provide an insight into internal dialogues that expose the often hidden elements of trauma, abuse and pain. Specifically alluding to childhood traumas, Dreyfus insists that Scumbag "isn't about extreme behaviour. Rather it's the revealing of something commonplace that refers to those who can't speak for themselves."

There is an underlying and deliberate unease in Dreyfus's phrases such as 'I forgive you every day' and 'horrific' both of which subtly suggest emotional anguish. Punishing Silence, one of three diptychs included in the exhibition, situates the phrase within the "bland suburban-ness" of a cricket pitch and a bathroom. Unlike Dreyfus's earlier work, it is the absence of the body which gives these photographs their poignancy. Despite this absence, the language evokes a strong presence, a voice or variety of voices entering into what Dreyfus terms the "psychological realm."

While there is a distinct progression from Dreyfus's earlier photographic work to the textile based installation work in Scumbag, a transition that greatly excites the artist, she clarifies that "I'm doing what I did earlier but in a very different way." The obvious question now is where will the artist go from here? With post- PhD projects already in the pipeline, Ella Dreyfus will continue to explore facets of the psychological and the transcendental and aspires to "give people an experience of something beyond their body."

"I look at things that are taboo, taboos about the body, taboos about emotion," she says, sitting in the Stills Gallery in Paddington surrounded by her latest works. "I find a way through my visual art practice to talk about things we're not allowed to talk about."

The show examines one of the big social taboos: childhood abuse, neglect and trauma. The photos depict domestic settings decorated by powerful words and phrases in colourful felt letters: a children's bedroom with the word "horrific" above the bed; a corner of a house with the words "I exist" visible under the table.

Dreyfus, 48, wanted the colourful lettering, reminiscent of children's blocks, to contrast with the darkness and sadness of their meaning. "These words go straight for the jugular," she says.

The Sydney artist and lecturer at the National Art School shot to prominence in 1992 with her Pregnancy Series, which saw her discussing and defending the works on Good Morning Australia and in glossy magazines. Most exhibitions since have also looked at bodies rarely seen in public, including the ageing female body and the post-op body of a transgender man. This show does not look specifically at the body, but the intimate words and places imply the presence of people at their most vulnerable.

"I'm not representing the physical body the way I used to, but the presence of the physical body is palpable," Dreyfus says.

The idea for the exhibition came in part from an earlier series about pre-pubescent boys, which generated anxious responses from some viewers, and led her to realise "there's nothing benign about childhood".

Dreyfus says her own childhood trauma of growing up with a father who was unable to talk about surviving the Holocaust also inspired this work. "I've become this kind of artist through a very strong desire to see things that can't be seen and tell things that can't be told through my art."

Although she has been hurt by some of the angry responses to her work, Dreyfus relishes that it provokes such a passion. One visitor to this show pointed at a photo and said through tears: "I know so many people who live in that house." Dreyfus says: "When what has come from my personal experience, my labour, reaches this public place and I see people being turned back in on themselves and their own histories and emotions, that's very satisfying."