Robyn Stacey : Guest Relations Brisbane

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Robyn Stacey Guest Relations Brisbane 2 July – 2 August 2014

Robyn Stacey Guest Relations Brisbane Through Robyn Stacey’s photography we imagine other people’s private worlds. Stacey brings our gaze to contemporary life and the transitory meetings of private and public worlds within the modern hotel room. By turning the hotel room into a camera obscura, the interiors of Brisbane high-rise city hotel chains and Sunshine Coast holiday apartments are transformed into darkrooms for dramatically projected landscape vistas which literally wallpaper the room.

Camera obscura is a term from the Latin for "dark room," the name given to the phenomenon whereby an image of the surrounding world is projected onto a screen or wall in a darkened room. Cited in the writings of Aristotle, and Da Vinci, used by Vermeer and Caravaggio to create their paintings, the camera obscura is in many ways the technological prototype for the modern camera.

Because light travels in a straight line, the camera obscura projects an upside down reversed image of the external world onto the walls and roof of the hotel room creating a surreal or hyper real space within a fairly prosaic and generic hotel room. Colonnades of buildings, cityscapes of roads and parks, well known landmarks such as Anzac Square, the Albert Street Methodist church and Customs House as well as everyday life are visually inserted into the closed and autonomous insularity of the room.

Underlying the hermetic nature of the hotel room is an awareness of its transient quality, whether it is experienced as a mode of transit between source and destination, or as the constructed world of inward-directed experience it is a world with a time limit, surrendered to the temporary and ephemeral.

The fleeting nature of the camera obscura corresponds to the brief tenure of the guest experience. Businessmen, young couples, and solo travelers are actors in these dreamlike scenarios; the upside-down, reversed and distorted visual effects of the camera obscura, produce surreal and psychological spaces which seem to materialize their inhabitants’ distant thoughts. Like stills from the sets of movies, the images offer us fragments of untold narratives. Intimate and enigmatic moments glimpse the plethora of stories we can only imagine might play out within a hotel rooms’ four walls. Through the theatrical and distorted view of the camera obscura is revealed a roving, fragmented and homogenised portrait of contemporary life. But by imbuing the transitory with the timeless, Stacey suggests that behind these closed, generic doors, we may all be looking outwards, seeking moments of beauty, clarity and meaningful connection.

The Brisbane hotels that generously participated in Guest Relations were the Sofitel Brisbane Central, Brisbane Marriott, Pullman King George Square, and the Mercure Brisbane.

Room 1817 Sofitel Brisbane, Daryl (2014) Type C print 133 x 100 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 2212 Sofitel Brisbane, Lesley (2014) Type C print 133 x 100 x cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 1817 Sofitel Brisbane, Philip (2014) Type C print 133 x 100 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room1817 Sofitel Brisbane, Jade (2014) Type C print 133 x 100 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 2212 Sofitel Brisbane, Wanda (2014) Type C print 133 x 100 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 2418 Marriott Brisbane, Mess (2014) Type C print 133 x 100 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room1412 Mercure Brisbane Courtney’s shoes (2014) Type C print 100 x 133 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 1412 Mercure Brisbane, Courtney and Michael (2014) Type C print 100 x 133 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 1064 Pullman Brisbane (2014) Type C print 100 x 133 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 14 Cartwright Ocean (2014) Type C print 100 x 135 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 14 Cartwright, Harbour (2014) Type C print 100 x 145 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Room 13 Cartwright, Michael and Katherine (2014) Type C print 100 x 133 cm edition of 5 + 3 AP $5,000

Robyn Stacey is one of Australia's most acclaimed photographers, creating spectacular and sumptuous images since the mid 1980s.

Whether breathing new life into the historical collections of Australian museums, or bringing our gaze to contemporary society, Stacey’s work broadens our personal perspectives by allowing us to imagine other people’s private worlds.

Three substantial publications, Home (2011), Museum (2007) and Herbarium (2004), beautifully capture Stacey’s fascination with archives, artifacts and specimens, and offer unique insight into the collections of the NSW Historic Houses Trust, the Macleay Collection of entomology, and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney. Stacey has been the recipient of major awards, grants and residencies. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the NGA, NPG, AGNSW, AGWA, NGV, AGSA, QAG, the NSW Historic Houses Trust, the City of Sydney, and Artbank.

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