Festival Guide
18 February – 7 March 2021
Contents 3 Introduction 5 Welcome 7 Events 8 Exhibitions and Artist Projects 61 Special Projects 62 New Photographers 64 Awards and Prizes 66 PHOTO Editions 68 Online 74 Maps 83 Acknowledgements 84 Donors 84 Support 86 Partners
USING THIS GUIDE PHOTO 2021 exhibitions and artist projects are separated into six geographic regions: Central, Inner North, South, East, West and Regional. Maps can be found on pages 74 – 82. Exhibitions that can be viewed online only are on pages 68 – 73. [Premiere] indicates a work that is being shown for the first time, including new commissions. [Australian Exclusive] indicates a project by an international artist showing in Australia for the first time. ONLINE CONTENT Visit photo.org.au for the full events program and the PHOTO Channel with exclusive essays, virtual tours, school resources, artist talks and interviews. For the latest Festival updates follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @photofestivalau
OPENING HOURS & BOOKING All PHOTO 2021 exhibitions and artist projects are free. Due to ongoing changes in COVIDSafe restrictions, we recommend you check venue websites for any updates and to check if timed bookings are required. HOW TO GET AROUND Where possible we encourage the use of public transport. Travel on Melbourne’s trains, trams and buses requires a myki card, with the exception of travel within the Free Tram Zone in Melbourne’s CBD. Many of the venues in Central and Inner North are within walking distance of each other. Regional venues can be accessed by Vline trains or coaches. Visit ptv.vic.gov.au/journey or call 1800 800 007 to plan your trip. If you are deaf, or have a hearing or speech impairment, you can use the National Relay Service to contact Public Transport Victoria. TTY users can call 03 9619 2727.
ACCESS Venues that are wheelchair accessible are marked with . Event listings on our website indicate if they are Auslan interpreted and whether they require advance booking for this service. For specific access information including accessible entrances and toilets, and tickets for companion card holders, please visit photo.org.au or contact the venue directly. Much of the program is located outdoors. While care has been taken to place works in locations which are as accessible as possible, from time to time access may be restricted due to a range of factors including ground surface and weather. BEING COVIDSAFE Each venue will be implementing their own COVIDSafe plan and we ask that you follow their directions. Stay at home if you feel unwell, and organise to get tested if you have COVID-19 symptoms.
PHOTO 2021 acknowledges the Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners of Melbourne and pays respect to their Elders, past, present and emerging. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of lands and waters across Australia and recognise that Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded.
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Introduction Based in Melbourne and operating across Victoria, PHOTO 2021 is a new vision for photography in Australia. Originally intended to launch as PHOTO 2020, against all the odds the Festival is now celebrating its debut program with 94 free exhibitions and artist projects featuring over 160 artists from more than 25 countries. United by the central theme of ‘The Truth’, the works exhibited at PHOTO 2021 question the veracity of the photographic image in a time of social media, fake news, and artificial intelligence. In this age of unparalleled social, psychological and technological shifts, the relationship between photography and truth has never been more fascinating, complex, or urgent. The Festival is dedicated to new photography and new ideas. Alongside PHOTO 2021’s curation and commissioning of dozens of artist projects taking over public spaces across Melbourne, our exhibition partners have expertly curated their own venues. The result is a monumental assembly of images for you to explore, with the vast majority of these premiering at the Festival or being presented in Australia for the first time. Revealing both political and personal truths, PHOTO 2021 will take you on a journey through Melbourne, and beyond. It will take you on a trail of exhibitions and public art located throughout the centre of Melbourne, from the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Parliament of Victoria, where questions of truth will be brought to the very heart of democracy. It will reveal over 500 metres of photography on hoardings with the Metro Tunnel Creative Program. It will surprise you with photography on billboards, on building facades, down laneways and outside landmarks such as State Library Victoria and St Paul’s Cathedral. It will transform Argyle Square in Carlton into an outdoor gallery of provocative, contemporary portraiture. The Festival extends through the Inner North, South, East and Western suburbs and into regional Victoria. You’ll be in the presence of First Nations stories, and witness the realities of lives in faraway towns and cities. You’ll discover how new
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technologies are shifting our sense of reality, and challenging the authenticity of the photographic image. Alongside the very best international artists and photographers—Zanele Muholi, Sam Contis, Simon Fujiwara, Emmanuelle Andrianjafy, Daniel Shea and Broomberg & Chanarin, to name a few—you’ll encounter truly great work from established and emerging Australian talents such as Brook Andrew, Hoda Afshar, Eliza Hutchison and Hayley Millar-Baker. PHOTO 2021 is progressive, supportive and resolutely democratic, featuring artists from a vast range of backgrounds, and experiences, and at different stages of their careers. This is a festival where the most exciting emerging artists are given a platform alongside names of great significance to tell their stories. All the exhibitions and outdoor displays are free, inviting everyone to engage with the ideas, questions and experiments happening at the forefront of contemporary photographic practice. For anyone unable to attend in person, or keen to immerse themselves further, the PHOTO Channel can be found online at photo.org.au/channel and features an abundance of related content including essays, artist talks and interviews. Events including PHOTO IDEAS and PHOTO LIVE will be livestreamed during the Festival and over a dozen exhibitions from our expanded program come to life online with virtual tours and more. PHOTO 2021 is a living, pulsing pageant of human exploration, celebration and questioning—a tour of what’s happening now in the world of photography, and what’s coming next. It connects Australia with the international photography community and galvanises Melbourne’s role as a global hub for photography and visual art. Whether you are a skilled photographer, a seasoned art connoisseur, or you’ve never attended any kind of festival ever before, you—the viewer—are the critical, animating force of PHOTO 2021. ELIAS REDSTONE Artistic Director, PHOTO 2021
Image: Sara, Peter & Tobias, from the series The Merge (detail), 2017 – 2020. Presented exclusively in Australia for PHOTO 2021—see page 15. 4
Welcome
THE HONOURABLE LINDA DESSAU AC Governor of Victoria
SALLY CAPP Lord Mayor, City of Melbourne
It is a pleasure to support PHOTO 2021, Victoria’s inaugural International Festival of Photography. Creative arts have always been a rich part of our State’s identity. Home to a broad range of festivals and major events, we know that cultural experiences are among the top reasons that people choose to visit Melbourne. Photography is one of the many artforms that attract them, and with a strong photographic community, Victoria provides the perfect home for this new visual arts biennial. Congratulations to all those who have conceived of, supported and made this Festival possible, especially in the face of the global complexities of COVID-19. On behalf of all Victorians, I wish PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography every success.
Melbourne has a long history of celebrating and championing the arts. The City of Melbourne is proud to support PHOTO 2021 which brings together our outstanding collections and artistic talent, and commissions artists and photographers to occupy and respond to our city’s public spaces in new and inspiring ways. This unique event takes place in locations all over Melbourne, from renowned museums, galleries and universities to streets and laneways. I especially look forward to exploring the outdoor commissions, including those in the Royal Botanic Gardens. PHOTO 2021 promises to become one of the most significant cultural festivals in Australia, inviting everyone to consider the role photography plays in our lives. Congratulations to all the organisers and artists for creating memorable experiences through the inspiring art form of photography.
DANNY PEARSON MP Minister for Creative Industries
MARK HENRY Chair, PHOTO 2021
Photography is one the most powerful, ubiquitous and accessible art forms and it plays an important role in how we see the world. Photo 2021 celebrates the strength and diversity of photography through the lens of leading local and international artists. This ambitious new festival brings together hundreds of exhibitions and events right across Melbourne and regional Victoria–not just in galleries but out on the streets and in our public spaces too. This includes a giant 500-metre outdoor public art gallery, created in partnership with the Metro Tunnel Project, featuring 16 large-scale artworks on construction hoardings. Photo 2021 is an exciting addition to Victoria’s creative calendar and the Victorian Government is proud to help bring it to life.
PHOTO 2021 is an exemplar of everything that makes Melbourne a significant figure in the global art community today: built on collaboration, risk-taking and, above all, excellence. Our partners and donors have supported the commissioning of over 30 new works. Many of these are presented outdoors, providing opportunities for artists to work at an urban scale and to encourage audiences to engage with and think about the role photography plays in their lives. Our supporters have also helped the Festival to champion emerging artists, allowing them to develop their practice and show it to an international audience. That support has manifested as a mentorship program, a fellowship with State Library Victoria, and our New Photographers program. PHOTO 2021 is an incredibly ambitious new biennale for Australia. On behalf of the board, welcome!
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Image: Atong Atem, Sahara, 2020. Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery. Presented by Immigration Museum —see page 29. 6
Events
PHOTO 2021 features an extensive calendar of events to be experienced either in person and online. Scan QR code for the full events program.
Launch Weekend
PHOTO LIVE
18–21 February
19, 22 & 25 February
Help us celebrate the launch of PHOTO 2021 with a long weekend of exhibition openings, artist talks, walks and other activities with Australia’s leading photographers, curators and photography professionals. With a focus on different areas of Melbourne each day, explore the breadth of the Festival as you traverse the city and explore our curated calendar of events.
Taking place in the unique surroundings of MPavilion Parkade, PHOTO LIVE is a series of conversations about the social and cultural role photography plays in our lives. Featuring artists who are premiering new work in conversation with curators and academics, these exchanges will address a range of issues from identity, community and belonging to human rights and social justice.
Photobook Weekend
In partnership with MPavilion
PHOTO IDEAS
27–28 February
24 February, 2 & 4 March
Taking place across two venues, the Photobook Weekend is a time to celebrate the role of photobooks in contemporary photographic practice. The program will cater for everyone passionate about photobooks with both virtual and IRL events. Visitors can attend book launches, artist talks and panel discussions with some of the industry’s leading practitioners alongside exclusive displays of books.
Broadcast on photo.org.au, PHOTO IDEAS is an expanded symposium on photography, truth and power in the post-internet age. Over six sessions, leading international and local artists, curators and academics will address a range of critical themes—Context, Sovereignty, Witness, Doubt, Simulation and Control—exploring how new methods of making, sharing and viewing photographs are shifting our perception of reality.
Hosted by Centre for Contemporary Photography and Le Space Supported by Momento Pro and Goethe Institut
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In partnership with RMIT School of Art and Monash Gallery of Art
Zanele Muholi (ZA)
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Somnyama Ngonyama Faces and Phases [Australian Exclusive] Argyle Square Lygon St, Carlton 18 February – 7 March Presented by Photo Australia in partnership with the Biennale of Sydney Supported by the City of Melbourne and Naomi Milgrom Foundation
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Visual activist Zanele Muholi uses photography to assert the rights of black lesbian, gay, trans, queer and intersex communities. Dissecting issues of race, sexuality and gender, Muholi’s work asks critical questions about social justice, human rights and the representation of the black body. An evocative series of self-portraits, Somnyama Ngonyama brings the audience to the intensely personal landscape of Muholi’s own face and body. Each image has been composed using everyday items as props to explore different archetypes and personae. The project has evolved as Muholi travels the world and includes new work made in Australia for PHOTO 2021. Over a decade in the making, Faces and Phases is a series of bold portraits of South African lesbians. As a response to the discrimination and violence experienced by queer women in South Africa, Faces and Phases is a visual record that is as important as it is powerful.
Image: Zanele Muholi, Thandiwe, Roanoke, Virginia, 2018. Courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yancey Richardson, New York © Zanele Muholi. 9
BROOMBERG & CHANARIN (ZA/UK) Spirit is a bone
[Australian Exclusive] Argyle Square Lygon St, Carlton 18 February – 7 March
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Captured by a facial recognition system developed in Moscow for ‘public security and border control surveillance’, the faces of Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevic and a number of other Russian citizens are depicted in Broomberg & Chanarin’s Spirit is a bone. Examining the proposed purposes and actual effects of facial recognition systems in public spaces, South African artist Adam Broomberg and British artist Oliver Chanarin have co-opted this particular surveillance device to construct their own taxonomy of portraits of civilians—categorised by their profession in an homage to August Sander— in a time of unprecedented intrusions on personal privacy. These images provide an unsettling insight into the dehumanising quality of machines that can capture ‘noncollaborative portraits’ of unconsenting people with great precision, and the untrammelled power of a state that holds such a tool.
Image: Broomberg & Chanarin, The Revolutionary, from the series Spirit is a bone, 2013. Courtesy the artists.
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MAIJA TAMMI (FI) One of Them Is a Human [Australian Exclusive]
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Argyle Square Lygon St, Carlton 18 February – 7 March Presented by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021
“Do androids dream about being featured in portrait competitions?” When The New York Times posed this question to readers, it was in response to Finnish photographer Maija Tammi’s work One of Them Is a Human. Presenting three androids and possibly one human, the series garnered controversy after winning two awards in one of the world’s
largest photographic competitions, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize. The rules of the prize state that submitted images must portray “a living sitter”. At a time when our species is facing the very real prospect of technological replacement, One of Them Is a Human asks an unsettling question: how do we define ‘alive’?
Image: Maija Tammi, One of Them Is a Human #1 (detail), 2017.
SILIN LIU (CN) I’m Everywhere [Australian Exclusive]
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michaels billboard Above 263-269 Elizabeth St, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March
In I’m Everywhere, Silin Liu highlights the ever-present persona of the artist by travelling through time and space as her alter ego, Céline Liu. Inserting herself into significant moments in history, Silin ponders the role of photography in the era of cultural globalisation, the irrational worship of icons, and our understanding of images as vehicles of historical storytelling.
The two images exhibiting above michaels camera store for PHOTO 2021 depict Céline Liu chatting with Frida Kahlo in Mexico, and standing beside Andy Warhol in Tiananmen Square. Each image is the result of a meticulous week-long digital work-process that places charismatic Céline into the familiar settings of our cultural memory.
Image: Silin Liu, Frida Kahlo and Celine Liu, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Migrant Bird Space.
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HAYLEY MILLAR-BAKER Gunditjmara (AU) I Will Survive
Central, South 5
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I Will Survive is a new body of work from acclaimed artist Hayley Millar-Baker. Drawing on childhood memories of State Library Victoria forecourt imparted cautionary tales and instructions 328 Swanston St, Melbourne for surviving in the bush, Millar-Baker creates works based on stories that have 18 February – 7 March been passed down in the form of warnings, myths, ghost stories and hauntings. Vivien Anderson Gallery Ground Fl, 284 – 290 St Kilda Road, St Kilda Through meticulous photographic assemblage, the series considers how personal and collective memories change 10 February – 6 March over time in their retelling, and the ways Tue – Fri, 11am – 5pm past experiences continue to flow into— Sat, 12pm – 4pm and shape—the present. Across these works, Millar-Baker positions herself in Commissioned by Photo Australia for relation to a manifold history in order to PHOTO 2021 dissect the ways it haunts us now, and Supported by State Library Victoria and the offer up imaginings of our possible futures. Bringing together landscape photography City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program and studio self-portraiture, I Will Survive is a playfully dark and defiant series—an offering of enigmatic narratives that tell us how we can learn through fear, and grow a voice through survival. Millar-Baker is the recipient of State Library Victoria’s Photography Fellowship. [Premiere]
Image: Hayley Millar-Baker, detail from I Will Survive, 2020. Courtesy the artist and Vivien Anderson Gallery.
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HODA AFSHAR (IR/AU) Agonistes
[Premiere] St Paul’s Cathedral (exterior) Cnr Flinders St/Swanston St, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Missing Persons Room 11/12, Level 4, Nicholas Building 37 Swanston Street, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Wed – Sat, 12pm – 5pm Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021 Supported by the City of Melbourne, Mark Henry, and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria
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In her PHOTO 2021 commission Agonistes, Tehran-born, Melbourne-based visual artist Hoda Afshar explores the experiences of people who have spoken out. Combining new and old photographic techniques, Afshar creates images that reflect the experiences of whistleblowers who have voiced harms and misconducts being perpetrated in Australian institutions today. Acts of whistleblowing aimed at calling attention to alleged wrongdoing or misconduct continue to make headlines around the world. But despite the introduction of policies meant to protect them, the efforts of whistleblowers in Australia are increasingly being undermined by gag orders, policing, and other forms of control—efforts to silence those who have spoken out, and to discourage anyone who might think to. Whether whistleblowing on matters to do with immigration detention, youth detention, or aged and disability care, Afshar’s subjects have spoken out for those whose voices were never meant to be heard. The accompanying film can be viewed at Missing Persons.
Image: Hoda Afshar, Agonistes (still) 2020, 1-channel digital video, colour, sound. Courtesy and © the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. 13
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SIMON FUJIWARA (UK/JP) Joanne
[Australian Exclusive] Anna Schwartz Gallery 185 Flinders Ln, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Tues – Fri, 12pm – 5pm Sat, 1pm – 5pm Presented by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021 Supported by British Council
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Simon Fujiwara’s work can be seen as a response to the cultural obsession with self-presentation that new technologies provoke in individuals. His film Joanne depicts the many faces of his former secondary school teacher, Joanne Salley—winner of the 1998 Miss Northern Ireland beauty pageant, artist, teacher and champion boxer. After nurturing Fujiwara’s creative talents at the prestigious Harrow School for boys, Salley found herself at the centre of a damaging British tabloid scandal where students discovered and circulated topless photographs of her that had been taken privately. Five years on, Fujiwara and Salley produced a short film exploring the scandal, aiming to present a more complex picture of her. The film follows the pair as they meet with professionals from the worlds of fashion, advertising and PR. Employing various media—from Instagram to high-end fashion photographs—they orchestrate Joanne’s new public image.
Simon Fujiwara, Joanne, 2016/2018, Duration 12:06 min (video). Commissioned by FVU, The Photographers’ Gallery and Ishikawa Foundation. Supported by Arts Council England. Courtesy the artist; FVU, The Photographers’ Gallery; Ishikawa Foundation; and Esther Schipper, Berlin. Film still © Simon Fujiwara. 14
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SARA, PETER & TOBIAS (DK) The Merge
[Australian Exclusive] 225 Bourke St, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Mon – Fri, 8am – 5.30pm Sat, 1pm – 5pm Installation commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021
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Are we living in a computer simulation? Copenhagen-based collective Sara Brincher Galbiati, Peter Helles Eriksen and Tobias Selnaes Markussen examine the interactions between humankind and machine—documenting human existence at a time when the physical and digital are almost indistinguishable. The collective travelled the world to explore how far humans have come in creating a perfect simulation, gaining access to some of the most prestigious laboratories working with AI and robots. In making The Merge, the collective employed cutting-edge camera techniques such as LIDAR and Real Sense to give a visual interpretation of the world as seen by machines, and try to find flaws and glitches in our reality that might lead us out of the simulation. Exploring the complex dynamic between humanity and technology, The Merge asks us to consider a series of existentially disquieting questions about whether our physical reality exists as we believe it.
Image: Sara, Peter & Tobias, from the series The Merge, 2017 – 2020.
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PHOTO 2021 x Metro Tunnel Creative Program PHOTO 2021 and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program present over 500 metres of photographic art, displayed on construction hoardings across Melbourne. A panorama of 16 artist projects from around the globe spanning Victoria, Dakar, Mongolia, USA and beyond, this open-air, cross-city exhibition constitutes a major program for PHOTO 2021. Most of the works on display are new commissions, or being presented exclusively in Australia for the Festival. This is the first time that the Metro Tunnel Creative Program has invited one festival to curate works across each of their construction sites. PHOTO 2021
celebrates this honour by adorning hundreds of metres of hoarding with some of the most inspiring contemporary photography in the world today. On display from 18 February 2021 (refer to website for access details)
City Square Town Hall Station precinct PHOEBE POWELL (AU), KATE DISHER-QUILL (AU) Surge [Premiere] Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Created as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across Melbourne in 2020, Surge reflects on the experiences of a diverse range of healthcare professionals. In a time when photographic work was restricted and the healthcare worker experience was heavily politicised, Zoom conversations between the subjects and artists became central to developing the project using a collaborative, practice-led approach. In referencing the dichotomy between the clinical protocols of the pandemic and the vulnerability of the human experience, Surge combines the medical with the personal, to reveal and acknowledge our capacity to endure. Image: Kate Disher-Quill & Phoebe Powell, 0-95, 2020.
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Scott Alley Town Hall Station precinct MAREE CLARKE Yorta Yorta / Wamba Wamba / Mutti Mutti / Boonwurrung (AU) Uncle Jack Charles (Men in Mourning)
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Mourning is an important ritual and ceremony, with all cultures having ways of expressing and showing loss of kin, land, language and cultural practices. This work by First Nations artist Maree Clarke is an expression of Indigenous loss. As part of the Ritual and Ceremony series, Uncle Jack Charles (Men in Mourning) shows venerated elder, artist, actor, musician, activist and Stolen Generation survivor Uncle Jack Charles in the white ochre of traditional mourning and a shirt bearing the scarification marks of bereavement. Like her people, Clarke’s portrait of Uncle Jack stands strong in expressing resilience in the face of loss and a tenacious celebration of survival.
Image: Maree Clarke, Uncle Jack Charles (Men in Mourning), from the Ritual and Ceremony series, 2012.
Swanston St State Library precinct (cnrs of Franklin and A’Beckett Sts) ALAN STEWART Taungurung (AU/PH) our truth, our history [Premiere] Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program our truth, our history asks the viewer to question the ‘truths’ that are held about this land and its first people, doing so through large scale photographs taken across the Kulin Nations, lands within what is now referred to as ‘Victoria’. Stewart’s landscapes, exhibited within the CBD, reveal that the connection to country is as true within the urban environment as it is within the bushland he depicts. His images make a connection with memory, history, and possible futures on this land. Alan Stewart has been mentored by the RMIT School of Art. Image: Alan Stewart, from the series our truth, our history, 2020.
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Franklin St East State Library precinct
KENTA COBAYASHI (JP) Photographic Universe [Premiere] Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Kenta Cobayashi’s photographic work is made up of two critical processes: capturing, and manipulating. A lifetime spent online and playing computer games has primed the Japanese artist to see the potential of image manipulation—a common digital activity—as an artistic tool, an opportunity “to touch this world and build rich communication with it.” Cobayashi uses the ‘smudge’ tool of Photoshop, the tool used to drag the image “as if making a brushstroke on paint.” The effect imbues the image with a giddy, ethereal sense of movement, suspending all questions around where photography ends and processing begins. Image: Kenta Cobayashi, Photographic Universe (detail), 2020.
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Franklin St East State Library Station precinct FELICITY HAMMOND (UK) Fault Line [Premiere]
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Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program ‘Faults’ and ‘folds’ are not just terms associated with natural geology—they are also used when speaking of financial instability. As urban centres in global cities are upturned by a global pandemic, and the resulting social and economic turmoil, questions are raised about the function, meaning and morphology of these traditional meeting points. Presented in an area undergoing vast urban transformation, Fault Line transforms the utopian renders that are often used to advertise developments. Torn and creased, the manipulated utopian render embodies the fragile surface of urban space, asking us to consider the role we play in shaping the future of cities. Image: Felicity Hammond, Fault Line (detail), 2020.
NICO KRIJNO (ZA) GONDWANA BATHOLITH (1) Composition with both geological and photographic time [Premiere]
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Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program A meditation on the fragility of our environment, and the transience of the marks we leave behind, Nico Krijno’s GONDWANA BATHOLITH (1) Composition with both geological and photographic time brings us into a space where nature and humanity communicate together. This is a place where late-Precambrian metamorphic sandstone becomes the site of spiritual exercise, as significant and vulnerable as any sentient life. Informed by ancient rock paintings and engravings believed to bring fortune to the hunt, Krijno’s work speaks of the ways human presence transforms a landscape—to beautiful or devastating effect. Image: Nico Krijno, GONDWANA BATHOLITH (1) Composition with both geological and photographic time (detail), 2020. 19
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Barry St Parkville Station precinct
SAM CONTIS (US) Beating Time, Movement of the Hand (After Lange) [Premiere]
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Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program In Beating Time, Movement of the Hand, artist Sam Contis crops and recombines a series of photographs by iconic American photographer Dorothea Lange (1895 – 1965). Loosening the images from their original contexts, Contis creates a singular, sequential study of gesture. The work references 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s movement studies. While Muybridge sought to disclose truths previously invisible to the human eye, Contis explores the ways in which the recontextualisation of images can reveal unnoticed truths and generate new meanings. Image: Sam Contis, Beating Time, Movement of the Hand (After Lange) (detail), 2020. Courtesy the artist.
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EMMANUELLE ANDRIANJAFY (MG) Nothing’s in Vain [Australian Exclusive]
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In 2011, Malagasy photographer Emmanuelle Andrianjafy arrived in the port city of Dakar, which overlooks the Atlantic Ocean from the westernmost coast of Africa. For the first years of her migration, Andrianjafy was overwhelmed by the city. But eventually, she knew she had to confront her new environment. Nothing’s in Vain is Andrianjafy’s response to the experience of uprooting to the Senegalese capital—“a city as vibrant as it is disorientating”. Her photography captures a metropolis teetering between construction and deconstruction. Each image careens between street scenes, portraits, landscapes, and close-up details, recreating Andrianjafy’s fluctuating experiences of a multifaceted city.
Image: Emmanuelle Andrianjafy, from the series Nothing’s in Vain, 2017.
JESSE BOYD-REID (AU) The Gift [Premiere] Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Intimacy and spirituality find allegorical form in the photography of Melbournebased artist, Jesse Boyd-Reid. Merging candid documentation with constructed scenarios, Boyd-Reid explores relationships between the self, family and the environment. The Gift is a reflection on the ways that community and connection enrich our lives. Lines are deliberately blurred to indicate togetherness, and the shifting nature of beliefs around culture, sexuality and connection to place. This is a realm where ordinary objects act as both images of themselves, and symbols of the rituals that nourish and sustain us. Image: Jesse Boyd-Reid, from the series The Gift, 2020. Courtesy the artist.
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Barry St Parkville Station precinct (cont.) KATHRYN MCCOOL (NZ) Jubilee Years (1986-2020) [Premiere]
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Kathryn McCool’s Jubilee Years (19862020) strives to create an account of an elusive territory—not that of her homes in either New Zealand, or rural Victoria, but of her own psyche. Hovering over the decades with no clear place or time of belonging, McCool’s subjects—be they human or not— are given the same weight and presence in every frame in a realm of uncertain purpose and eerie beauty.
Image: Kathryn McCool, Untitled from the series Jubilee Years (1986-2020).
TAIYO ONORATO & NICO KREBS (CH) Continental Drift [Australian Exclusive] In 2013, photographers Nico Krebs and Taiyo Onorato loaded up their 1987 Toyota Land Cruiser in Switzerland and headed east on an epic journey across Eurasia. Their ultimate destination: Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. Before embarking on this adventure, Krebs and Onorato had no clear sense of what they would find. Ahead of them lay a vast land mass, shrouded in a haze of history and global politics. Continental Drift is a travel log straddling the fine line between documentation and fiction about unknown lands, their possible pasts and conjectured futures.
Image: Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Ghost Group, 2015 from Continental Drift, 2013 – 2017.
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University Square Parkville Station precinct LILLIAN O’NEIL (AU) Everything Forever [Premiere]
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Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Everything Forever is a series of collages composed of photos taken from secondhand books by artist Lillian O’Neil. Collecting the books from book fairs, archives and op-shops, O’Neil draws upon an extensive collection of pictures to investigate the contrast between obsolete pre-digital photographs and the infinite proliferation of digital images today. Favouring photographs that encapsulate a sense of passing time, natural vs. developed landscapes, human drama and shifting erotic perspectives, O’Neil builds each element into a grander narrative: a place where microcosm and macrocosm exist in one visual to become a monument to a disappearing photographic texture. Image: Lillian O’Neil, Everything Forever (detail), 2020.
Laurens St Arden Station precinct GEORGE GEORGIOU (UK) Americans Parade [Australian Exclusive]
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In 2016, the British photographer George Georgiou photographed people lining the streets of big cities and small towns across North America. The people were watching, or waiting for, parades. The resulting series was taken across fourteen states, twentyfour cities, and twenty-six parades in the year Trump was elected President. The mass gathering of people feels like a distant memory, a reminder of life before Covid. Amidst scenes of togetherness and apparent community harmony, moments of boredom, difference and suspended tension emerge, revealing the unity and fracture of American society.
Image: George Georgiou, July 4th Parade, Ripley, West Virginia, USA. 04/07/2016, from the series Americans Parade, 2016 23
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Royal Botanic Gardens Anzac Station precinct
JAMES TYLOR (AU) Economics of Minerals [Premiere] Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Situated along the Barrier Range in western New South Wales on Barkindji (Wiljakali) country, Broken Hill has been the site of an active mine since 1885. Once one of the largest natural deposits of lead, silver and zinc in the world, the mine is now almost depleted, the surrounding land devastated by the removal of minerals, groundwater and vegetation. Economics of Minerals highlights the environmental impact of mining on Australia. This photographic series depicts the barren landscapes around Broken Hill, overlaid with silver geometric shapes that represent mine shafts, slag dumps and the infrastructures of mining. Image: James Tylor, Economics of Minerals (detail), 2020.
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RBG Precinct 22
ANN SHELTON (NZ) an invitation to dance [Premiere]
RBG Precinct 23
Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Radical. Courtesan. Legend. The life of Lola Montez transcends truth and slips into desiring myth. A radical and mercurial figure Montez exceeded prescribed parameters of femininity and ignored limits and existing conventions controlling women’s bodies. Montez toured Australian gold rush towns during the 1850s as a performer— and was notably the first woman ever photographed smoking. Drawing upon Montez’s own use of photography to promote her self-image, Shelton has created a new series of works. An Instagram feed (@elizagilbertandlolamontez) created by the artist allows audiences to engage with archival material relating to Montez.
Image: Ann Shelton, an invitation to dance (detail), 2020.
AMANDA WILLIAMS (AU) The Alpine Moth [Premiere]
RBG Precinct
Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Metro Tunnel Creative Program Amanda Williams’ work draws parallels between the history of photography and the natural and built environment, addressing inherent and at times hidden layers of history that inform our understanding of a site. She works with analogue film and outdated materials that often leave a visible trace in the final photographs. This project is inspired by resting sites of the Bogong moth (aka the Alpine moth) in Victoria’s North East Alpine Region. Due to climate change and urban development along their migration route, moth numbers have been declining drastically. Williams sees the moth’s fate as an allegory of the times we live in. Image: Amanda Williams, Mount Buffalo plateau, Mount Buffalo National Park (#12), 2020. Courtesy the artist and the Commercial. 25
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Garden Variety: Photography, Politics and the Picturesque
[Premiere] Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Birdwood Avenue, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Daily, 9am – 5pm James Nguyen (AU), Luke Parker (AU), Steven Rhall (Taungurung, AU), Yvonne Todd (NZ), Grace Wood (AU), Emmaline Zanelli (AU) Curated by Isobel Parker Philip (refer to website for access details)
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RBG Precinct 25
Curated by Isobel Parker Philip, Garden Variety: Photography, Politics and the Picturesque is a site-responsive exhibition at Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. A suite of ambitious new lens-based commissions plots a pathway through the Gardens and leads visitors on a journey of discovery. The landscape itself is enlisted as an exhibition partner, with each installation mapped according to its surrounds. All of the featured artists engage with the Gardens’ history and draw reference from its rich archival holdings. Garden Variety challenges the idea that a garden exists and functions as an idyllic and politically neutral space. Sensitive to the symbolism attached to the site, the exhibition addresses the many functions and identities of Melbourne Gardens. The Gardens are a picturesque landscape and a scientific institution but also a marker of colonisation and an occasional backdrop for displays of soft power. They are a place for pleasure but also political performance, a civic space that carries (horti)cultural capital.
Image: Grace Wood, Abundance; scattered (study for Rose Pavilion), 2020. Found images, digital collage. Images sourced from the State Botanical Collection, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and the artist’s personal archive. 27
MARTIN ERRICHIELLO & FILIPPO MENICHETTI (IT) In Fourth Person
[Australian Exclusive] Istituto Italiano Di Cultura 233 Domain Rd, South Yarra 19 February – 16 April Mon – Thu 10am – 1:30pm; 2:30pm – 6pm Fri, 10am – 1:30pm
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Italian artists Filippo Menichetti and Martin Errichiello present a research project about the ancient region of Calabria, a place where power and betrayal combine. Since the 1960s, during the so-called ‘economic miracle’, Italy’s cultural and political powers instigated an extensive, radical process of transformation of the country’s regions and traditions, all in the name of a progress—installing new roads, industries, and a more homogenous national identity. An identity which had to be able to connect the most isolated areas of the country with one another. Menichetti and Errichiello’s exhibition is a multimedia research project about Calabria’s transformation over the last 50 years, and the challenges that modernity imposed upon its language and aesthetics. Created along the A3 Salerno–Reggio Calabria highway, Menichetti and Errichiello investigate the iconography and untold truths of a region grappling with its identity.
Image: Martin Errichiello and Filippo Menichetti, from In Fourth Person. Courtesy the artists.
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RBG Precinct
ATONG ATEM (SS/AU) To Be Real
[Premiere] Immigration Museum 400 Flinders St, Melbourne 23 November – 7 March Daily, 10am – 5pm
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Surreal mythologies and constructed un/ realities are brought to life in To Be Real, a major new commission by South Sudanese/ Australian artist Atong Atem for PHOTO 2021. Atem is known for exploring migrant narratives, postcolonial practices in the diaspora and identity through portraiture. Her dynamic compositions are drenched with colour, pattern, and potent visual references. These scenes reference the ways in which we construct personal and collective narratives, in an interplay of truth, reality, drama and artifice. An eclectic and precise creator, Atem draws details from the visual languages of fantasy and science fiction, afrofuturism, history and mythology, studio portraiture and youth culture. Her subjects are empowered to control their own narratives. Untethered from realities, they flourish in liminal dream spaces filled with imagination and poetry. Her images prompt us to consider how we construct pictures and stories to understand ourselves, and what new possibilities we might see for ourselves when we embrace unreality.
Image: Atong Atem, Achol (detail), 2020. Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery.
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AARON CHRISTOPHER REES (AU) Horizon [Premiere]
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CAVES The Nicholas Building Room 5, Level 8/37 Swanston St, Melbourne 5 February – 6 March Wed – Sat, 12pm – 5pm This project is supported by the City of Melbourne COVID-19 Arts Grant
Constructed through the manipulation of photographic film, Horizon is a multichannel video and photographic installation about the systemisation of human vision. Proposing that our internalisation of the camera has caused a kind of terminal blindness to the natural world, the work explores its premise metaphorically, through post photographic and structuralist
video techniques of making. Here, film is imagined as an iris—a boundary between world and viewer. Television screens in a vertical configuration are employed as virtual window frames—a ‘Zero Point’ of architecture—transmitting manipulated footage of the immediate space, and mirroring the glass high rise buildings visible from the gallery’s windows.
Aaron Christopher Rees, Window Shopping, 2020. Courtesy the artist.
Natasha Hertanto (ID), Helena Wijaya (ID) LEGENDA [Premiere]
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SIGNAL Flinders Walk, Northbank, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Thu – Sat, 12 – 4pm
An exciting new work from SIGNAL’s Young Creatives, LEGENDA (a word that roughly translates as ‘folklore’ or ‘legend’ in Bahasa Indonesia) is a photo essay that portrays Indonesian mythologies while reinterpreting and challenging the moral messaging behind them. Incorporating photography with textiles and murals, LEGENDA interrogates the Image: Natasha Hertanto.
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role of oral stories—how they become woven into national identities, sit in the gaps between generational perspectives, and invite alternative narratives to engage with compassion and curiosity. The series follows mythical characters in Melbourne settings, interrogating the inherently ‘Indonesian values’ Indonesians sometimes carry despite geographic relocation.
PIETER HENKET (NL) Congo Tales: Told by the People of Mbomo
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[Australian Exclusive] Peter O’Callaghan QC Gallery Owen Dixon Chambers, 205 William St, Melbourne 18 February – 26 March Mon – Fri, 8:30am – 5:30pm Presented by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021
A rich tradition of communicating history and lore through storytelling has been threatened by the impact of modernization and lives lost through conflict in the Congo Basin, the second largest tropical rainforest in the world. In this groundbreaking photo series that was 5 years in the making, the people of the Mbomo district staged their never-before recorded mythology for photographer Pieter Henket, in collaboration with Congolese philosophers S.R. Kovo N’Sondé and Wilfried N’Sondé. The project was produced by Tales of Us, an ongoing multimedia series communicating the urgency of protecting the world’s most powerful and fragile ecosystems and the people who call them home.
Image: Pieter Henket, Ground Squirrel – Animals, Totems and Symbols, 2017. Courtesy Kahmann Gallery © the artist. Produced by Tales of Us. 31
JUSTINE VARGA (AU) Tachisme
[Premiere] Tolarno Galleries Level 4/104 Exhibition St, Melbourne 13 February – 6 March Tue-Fri, 10am – 5pm Sat 1pm – 4pm
Image: Justine Varga, Vicissitude, 2018-19.
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Justine Varga’s work ruptures any distinction between photography and painting. In Tachisme, Varga explores the activity of decipherment in photographs and its relation to inscription, meaning and knowledge. Varga’s film negatives are smeared and stained with pigment during long exposures. When these negatives are printed large-scale, the latent inscriptions reveal artist’s fingertips, a trace of touching generally forbidden in photographic production. Varga sees her photography as a drawing with light, or as a lightsensitive substrate on which she makes marks or allows the world to leave marks. These photographs highlight a practice that is physical and chemical, autobiographical and contingent, painterly and photographic.
NOT FOR THE SAKE OF SOMETHING MORE
[Premiere] Sarah Scout Presents 13/12 Collins St, Melbourne 19 February – 27 March Thu – Sat, 12pm – 5pm Janina Green (AU), Tori Lill (AU), Ali McCann (AU), Sanja Pahoki (AU), Aaron Christopher Rees (AU), Kiron Robinson (AU), Emanuel Rodriguez-Chaves (CR), Curated by Kiron Robinson (AU)
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Photographs no longer reflect the world; rather the world reflects them. They deliver a version of reality that at surface level is consumed as ‘truth’. As such, photographs demand an act of faith. Featuring new commissions by Janina Green, Sanja Pahoki, Tori Lill, Kiron Robinson and Ali McCann alongside existing work from Emanuel Rodriguez and Aaron Christopher Rees, Not for the sake of something more confronts this condition and asks: What is photography today? How can the photographic image represent in a post-truth deep fake world? And how can artists say anything with a medium that requires such faith? This exhibition expands an understanding of photography beyond its representational fidelity to engage with the doubtful action of looking.
Image: Ali McCann, Continuous Relief, 2018. Courtesy the artist.
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Central
PAT BRASSINGTON (AU) Night Swimming
[Premiere] ARC ONE Gallery 45 Flinders Ln, Melbourne 2 February – 6 March Wed – Fri, 11am – 5:30pm Sat, 11am – 3pm
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Pat Brassington’s work exposes how the endless possibilities of our deep and complex inner states—its narratives of sex, memory and identity—run quietly rampant. Influenced by surrealism, feminism and psychoanalysis, these provocatively ambiguous images knit the ordinary with the unusual. In Night Swimming, Brassington’s photomontages reveal the power of the mind to transform mundane objects and situations into sites/sights of horror, menace, sensuality or desire. The digital manipulation and evocative juxtaposition of elements in each work leave them open to interpretation; bodily fragments, fleshy tones, props and claustrophobic interiors are rendered abject or sublime, unsettling or seductive, expose the viewer’s innermost predilections, hopes, biases and fears.
Image: Pat Brassington, Flushed (detail), 2019. Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery.
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Central
Central PATRICK WATERHOUSE (UK) with the Warlukurlangu Art Centre (AU) Restricted Images 34
[Australian Exclusive] Collins Place (rear wall) Flinders Lane, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Presented by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021
When European ethnologists documented Aboriginal groups living near Alice Springs in the late 1800’s, the authors were oblivious of the impact these images would have on the lives of their subjects. Over a century later, it is common for Indigenous communities across Australia to restrict the use of photography as a form of cultural protection. Responding to complex questions around photography, representation and agency, British artist Patrick Waterhouse and the Warlpiri of Central Australia have collaborated to make Restricted Images. This series of photographic portraits have been ‘restricted’—painted over and reclaimed—by the person depicted, or a close relation, as an act of personal advocacy and reclamation.
Image: Patrick Waterhouse, Let’s Go to Mining. Restricted with Dorothy Napurrurla Dickson, Sabrina Nangala Robertson, and Julie Nangala Robertson, 2014 – 2018. © Patrick Waterhouse/Warlukurlangu Artists.
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LUCAS BLALOCK (US) More Bunny [Premiere]
Central 35
Duckboard Place Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021
A toy bunny, opened as if surgically, and containing a blanket of the same material, uses humor to propose a literalist investigation of “what lies beneath.” Blalock’s joke is flatfooted but also disquieting. This darkly humorous visual in Lucas Blalock’s More Bunny—realized as a large outdoor mural—employs this rather
unnerving situation to suggest that the truth behind photography’s surfaces may not always be what it seems.
Lucas Blalock, More Bunny (detail), 2020.
SARA OSCAR (AU) Most Wanted [Premiere]
Central 36
AC/DC Lane, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021
Most Wanted is a series of black and white portraits by artist Sara Oscar that combines historical archive images with restaged photographs. The series draws on the familiar tropes of mugshot photography, but removes its subjects from their criminological context. By appropriating the institutional criminal photograph normally associated Image: Sara Oscar, Most Wanted (detail), 2020.
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as evidence in a court of law, the portraits play with the idea of photograph as ‘evidence’, or, document of ‘truth’. Without captions, the images point to the fluid dispersion of images in the post-truth, internet era: are these Tinder profile photographs, fashion headshots or records of the FBI’s most wanted?
SARA CWYNAR (CA) Rubens [Australian Exclusive]
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Sofitel Melbourne on Collins 25 Collins St, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March
New York-based artist Sara Cwynar’s works respond to the flow of images in our image saturated society. Spanning collage and installation, Cwynar creates and photographs intricate tableauxs in which magazine, advertising, and other found imagery are compiled together with images drawn from art historical sources.
Through the use of familiar icons and logos, and the power of a returning gaze, this work presents a critique of consumption and our cultural insistence on connecting beauty with truth.
Image: Sara Cwynar, Louis Vuitton Jeff Koons Rubens bag (detail), 2020. Courtesy of Sara Cwynar, Cooper Cole, Toronto, and Foxy Production, New York.
HEINRICH HOLTGREVE (DE) The internet as a place [Australian Exclusive]
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Windsor Place Located at the rear end of Windsor Hotel (111 Spring St), Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Supported by Goethe Institut
The internet is a network of networks. In his work The internet as a place, photographer Heinrich Holtgreve shows that these networks are not just abstract, but physical, too. Led by a series of his own questions— ‘What is the internet?’, ‘Can you visit it?’, ‘Is it a nice place?’—Holtgreve tracked down and photographed a number of sites
where the internet makes itself visible: data centres, servers in warehouses, exchange points, maps of international cable systems. The resulting images, shot mostly in Egypt, reveal some of the surprising physical realities behind the most powerful digital force that has ever connected our species.
Image: Heinrich Holtgreve, from the series, The internet as a place, 2013.
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KATE GOLDING (AU) Near this spot [Premiere]
Central 39
Gordon Reserve 74 – 108 Spring St, East Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021 Supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program
2020 marked the 250th anniversary of Captain James Cook’s Endeavour voyage along the East Coast of this continent, beginning at Tolywiarar (Point Hicks) in April 1770. Kate Golding’s Near this spot uses sites in Narrm (Melbourne) such as Cooks’ Cottage, and the Captain Cook statue in Euro-Yroke (St Kilda), to challenge the settler colonial reverence for Cook’s legacy.
Golding’s re-evalutation of Cook’s presence in history confronts the ongoing celebration of this divisive figure in a country that continues to ignore the unceded sovereignty of the First Nations people.
Image: Kate Golding, from the series Near this spot, 2012 – 2020.
LAURA DELANEY (AU) The Rise and Fall [Premiere]
Central 40
99 Spring St (exterior) Cnr Ulster Lane & Spring St, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021 Supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program
A climber clings to the side of a building at 99 Spring St. Their trajectory is upward, but will they rise, or fall? Both a question and spectacle, Laura Delaney’s The Rise and Fall is a sitespecific intervention that uses reworked found photography from vintage rock climbing journals. Blown up to billboard size and superimposed onto Melbourne’s Image: Laura Delaney, The Rise and Fall (detail), 2021.
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cityscape, Delaney’s climber scales the realm of capitalist culture, navigating the terrain ahead. The Rise and Fall is a meditation on the search for a new equilibrium in a planet facing crisis. Just as the image is dated, so too are our systems, calling to attention the need for a revised paradigm, mid climb.
ELIZA HUTCHISON (AU) Just wanted you to know
[Premiere] Parliament of Victoria (exterior) Spring St, East Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Commissioned by Photo Australia and the Parliament of Victoria for PHOTO 2021
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Modes of communication, ritual and resistances—Eliza Hutchison’s work as PHOTO 2021’s Photographer in Residence at the Parliament of Victoria examines the complex narrative forces of our political system. Experimental yet photojournalistic in approach, the work draws on broader personal and cultural narratives while exploring abstraction, photographic sequencing and sub-narratives as a personal yet political gesture. Conceptualised and configured by a South African-born Melbourne-based artist as resident ‘interloper’, this commission offers an alternative vision of the processes and protocols of Victoria’s Parliament. The work exists as an examination of democratic process, from the deeding of law through the lower and upper houses, to the meticulous rules around press and the personal and collective petitions of the people. Sporadic, intuitive, dispersed, the work coalesces as a ‘photo-poem’ examining how political narratives are constructed, reconfigured and hybridised in the image saturated condition of our post-internet age.
Image: Eliza Hutchison, from the series Just wanted you to know (detail), 2020-21. Courtesy the artist and Murray White Room. 39
ATONG ATEM (SS/AU) Monstera Obliqua
[Premiere] MARS Gallery 7 James St, Windsor 6 February – 7 March Tue – Sat, 10am – 4pm
Image: Atong Atem, courtesy the artist and MARS gallery.
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To accompany her PHOTO 2021 commission at the Immigration Museum, South Sudanese/Australian artist Atong Atem presents a new body of work at MARS Gallery. Her practice explores migrant narratives, postcolonial practices in the African diaspora, and concepts of identity, home, and liminal space. Monstera Obliqua uses photographic portraits, archival images and floral scans in sculptural, woven and collage forms. These works indirectly ask how we relate to our present and past, and what we choose to weave to create our concept of self.
BROOK ANDREW Wiradjuri/Celtic (AU) SMASH IT
Prahran Square 30 – 40 Izett, Prahran 18 February – 7 March Daily, 12pm – 6pm Supported by the City of Stonnington
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Brook Andrew’s video work brings together imagery of the destruction and defacement of monuments, old films and news stories. Throughout, there are excerpts from the artist’s interviews with Indigenous intellectuals and creatives Marcia Langton, Wesley Enoch, Lyndon Ormond-Parker and Maxine Briggs about cultural protocols, and the artist’s earlier work The Pledge, which is a reinterpretation of Jedda (1955)—the first colour feature film made in Australia and arguably the first starring Aboriginal peoples. The title references the history of smashing and defacing monuments which has particular resonance today. Featuring a hypnotic soundtrack, the work is created as a digital collage with materials sourced from the Internet, the Smithsonian Institute’s collections, and Andrew’s extensive archive of printed materials. SMASH IT is screened in a customised shipping container, wrapped with Andrew’s personal mantra—NGAJUU NGAAY NGINDUUGIRR—Wiradjuri for ‘I see you’.
Image: Brook Andrew, SMASH IT, 2018, single channel video, 28 minutes. Edited by Giacomo Sanzani and Brook Andrew. The work was created during a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2017 and it is edited in collaboration with Giacomo Sanzani. 41
MICHAEL COOK Bidjara (AU) Undiscovered
THIS IS NO FANTASY 108 – 110 Gertrude St, Fitzroy 18 February – 7 March Tue – Fri, 10am – 5pm Sat, 12pm – 5pm
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Through the manipulation of photography, Michael Cook looks at the ‘discovery’ of Australia and its representation in history. His works are produced from his desire to explore and engage with his Aboriginal ancestry. Cook revisits then restages the annals of Australian history since Federation and, in doing so, creates a narrative that follows the impacts on Aboriginal life and culture. His photographs consider the staging of Indigenous culture through the lens of the white Australian settler and seek to offer up an alternative narrative.
Image: Michael Cook, Mother (Bicycle), 2016. Courtesy the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY.
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Inner North
DAVID ROSETZKY (AU) Composite Acts [Premiere]
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Sutton Gallery 254 Brunswick St, Fitzroy 6 February – 6 March Wed – Sat, 11am – 5pm Supported by City of Melbourne Quick Response Grant
Composite Acts is a video and performance-based artwork that uses speech, choreography, and set design to explore non-binary identities, and the relative, fragmentary nature of the self. In collaboration with choreographer Jo Lloyd, performers Arabella Frahn-Starkie, Shelley Lasica and Harrison Ritchie-Jones, visual artist & set designer Sean Meilak,
cinematographer Katie Milwright, composer Duane Morrison, and video editor James Wright, Composite Acts draws upon personal relationships and family histories. The script is subsequently spoken, deconstructed, and integrated with choreographed movement in dialogue with a suite of sculptural objects, from which Rosetzky has generated a new series of colour photographs.
Image: David Rosetzky, Composite Acts, film still.
GUY GRABOWSKY (AU), KIAH PULLENS (AU) neither here nor there [Australian Exclusive]
Inner North 46
Sutton Projects 230 Young St Fitzroy 6 February – 6 March Wed – Sat, 11am – 5pm
neither here nor there is a collaborative installation by artists Guy Grabowsky, Kiah Pullens and production and lighting designer Ashley Buchanan, created in response to Sutton Projects’ secondary function as an artwork storage facility. The installation draws on this environment to examine photography’s ability to document and archive, scrutinize expectations and
dependency on the medium, while questioning its capacity to warp our perception of time. Bringing together sculptural interventions and abstract imagery, with the materials and aesthetics of construction, neither here nor there will convert Sutton Projects into a quasidilapidated space that resembles a building site, or archaeological dig; a liminal zone that is either falling apart or coming together.
Image: Digital image by Guy Grabowsky and Kiah Pullens, 2020.
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Image: George Georgiou, Algiers, New Orleans from the series Americans Parade, 2016. Presented in partnership with Metro Tunnel Creative Program—see page 23. 44
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RUTH MADDISON (AU) It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
[Premiere] Centre for Contemporary Photography 404 George St, Fitzroy 18 February – 18 April Wed - Sun, 11am - 5pm This exhibition has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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CCP presents a major survey of one of Australia’s preeminent social documentary and feminist photographers, Ruth Maddison. The exhibition celebrates Maddison’s significant contribution to the documentation of Australian life and society from the 1970s to the present—from her earliest iconic hand-coloured works, the working life of women, Melbourne’s social and cultural life of the 1980’s, and Maddison’s documentation of the people and industries of her adopted home of Eden. CCP will premier Maddison’s The Fellow Traveller, an immersive photographic installation exploring her father’s radical political activities from the 1950s–1980s that were under ASIO scrutiny, including his travels to Soviet Russia, China and Cuba. Combining archival material, footage and hand-coloured photographs among a sea of revealing and curious images, The Fellow Traveller reveals the shifting nature of long held personal and historical truths at a time of increasing social and political urgency.
Image: Ruth Maddison, My parents gave me a colourful life (1976), 2020.
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Inner North
SHEA KIRK (AU) Vantages [Premiere]
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Daine Singer Rear, 90 Moor St, Fitzroy 17 February – 13 March Wed – Fri, 12pm – 5pm Sat, 12pm – 5pm Supported by Thirds Fine Art Printing
Premiering new work from the ongoing stereoscopic series Vantages, artist Shea Kirk invites people to be photographed in his home studio, in front of simple backdrops. Working with dual large format cameras, each portrait is exposed onto separate sheets of black and white film, simultaneously capturing two images of the sitter from different perspectives.
The process is slow and methodical, enabling an intimate exchange that highlights the agency between photographer and subject. Conscious of their own vulnerabilities, each sitter is aware of what it means to represent themselves, and through the very nature of this dual-imaging process, resists being reduced to a single vantage point.
Image: Shea Kirk, Sam Biddle (left and right view), 2019.
LAUREN DUNN (AU) New Romanticism [Premiere]
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28 Rokeby St, Collingwood 18 February – 11 March Wed – Sun, 12pm – 6pm
Melbourne-based artist Lauren Dunn continues her enquiries into the role that images play in affecting our relationships with food, looking particularly at their influence on the politics and ethics surrounding consumption trends. Her latest work is an examination of the power structures hidden behind romanticised plant-and-animal imagery in the promotion of the food we eat. Image: Lauren Dunn, Shopping for eggs, 2020.
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Comprising images and sculptural gestures, New Romanticism plays out the findings of Dunn’s extensive research, while engaging in contemporary questions surrounding photographic practise. Manipulating ideas of photographic thinking, Dunn twists the codes and conventions of commercial photography, and presents a thought-provoking take on the post-photographic landscape.
MASHARA WACHJUDY (AU) Always
Inner North 50
West Space Collingwood Yards, 102/30 Perry St, Collingwood 23 January – 7 March Wed – Fri, 12pm – 6pm Sat – Sun, 12pm – 4pm
Australian-Javanese artist Mashara Wachjudy contemplates and leans into loss and love in Always—a new work that takes comfort in careful arrangements of recent and past work. Occupying the West Space Window, Always reflects on the tensions that arise between the accumulation of time and the importance of remembering. Sculptural
and photographic, the work comprises framed digital prints, supported by sculptural structures made from glass bricks. Through these materials, the artist explores the architectural nature of memory, time and feeling.
Image: Mashara Wachjudy, pre-luved, 2018
LEYLA STEVENS (AU/BALI) A Line in the Sea
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West Space Collingwood Yards, 102/30 Perry St, Collingwood 23 January – 7 March Wed – Fri, 12pm – 6pm Sat – Sun, 12pm – 4pm
A Line in the Sea is a moving-image work by Leyla Stevens that contests the construction of Bali as an island paradise within the Australian imagination. The multi-channel video is a feminist retelling of a seventies Australian cult surf-film that popularised Bali as a tourist destination. The lush, colour-saturated imagery directly references the footage of
Australian male surfers as they ‘discover’ south Bali’s coastlines, less than a decade following Indonesia’s anti-communist killings that claimed 80,000 lives in Bali alone. Using speculative and documentary modes of filmmaking, the work explores the spectral trace of Bali’s political violence and looks at the ways the Australian surfer romance wiped the island clean of past atrocities.
Image: Leyla Stevens, A Line in the Sea, 2019. Courtesy the artist.
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CHRISTOPHER DAY (AU) Inimical Cave [Premiere]
Inner North 52
LON Gallery 21 Easey St, Collingwood 10 February – 6 March Wed – Sat, 12pm – 5pm
In 2020, the realities of the world have become a pageant of messages condensed into screens, where media casts only a shadow of ‘the truth’. Christopher Day’s Inimical Cave observes the similarities between Plato’s Cave concept and humanity’s recent confinements in our own, homey, quarantine grottos. Scenes of swamps, pizza, cultivated
fields, dwellings, people, ducks, antique furniture, DVD players and curtained interiors act as humorous allegorical projections of the scenes of recent life, while attempting to illuminate how our perception of the world can become distorted by the vomitous creations layered by the media.
Image: Christopher Day, Untitled, 2020. Courtesy the artist and LON Gallery.
DANIEL SHEA Untitled [Premiere]
Inner North 53
Cnr Sackville & Smith St (billboard), Collingwood 18 February – 7 March Commissioned by PHOTO Australia for PHOTO 2021
Focusing especially on the density and chaos of cities, photographer Daniel Shea’s work explores urbanisation, architecture and the changing forms of capital. Throughout his practice, Shea continually investigates the possibilities of photography and the inherent truth of the photographic image. His latest series pays particular attention to the marketing of new
developments around his home in New York. Images of idealised inhabitants of future buildings are frozen between real people going about their daily lives, creating a fictionalised urban landscape that combines the now and the near future. Yet in documenting and manipulating these contrasting, sometimes problematic situations, Shea presents a critique of the contemporary urban experience.
Image: Daniel Shea, from the series Untitled, 2020. Courtesy the artist.
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NANNA HEITMANN (DE/RU) Hiding From Baba Yaga [Australian Exclusive]
Inner North 54
Le Space 1 Mater St, Collingwood 18 February – 7 March Mon, Wed, Thu, Sat, 12pm – 5pm
Magnum photographer Nanna Heitmann presents her award-winning documentary series, Hiding From Baba Yaga, for the first time in Australia. In this series, Heitmann, who has worked on photojournalism assignments for The New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Washington Post and Stern Magazine, explores the people and landscape of the Yenisei river. The river has
long been home for nomadic peoples who were outcast by mainstream society or escaping persecution, and still remains a place for displaced peoples. Photographing the worlds of loners, outsiders and dreamers that live along the river, Heitmann’s work explores the mysticism surrounding the area, while revealing truths of life on the Yenisei.
Image: Nanna Heitmann, from the series Hiding from Baba Yaga (detail), 2018. Courtesy the artist.
Inner North
SIM CHI YIN (SG) Most People Were Silent [Australian Exclusive]
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Le Space 1 Mater St, Collingwood 18 February – 7 March Mon, Wed, Thu, Sat, 12pm – 5pm
Shown for the first time in Australia, Magnum photographer Sim Chi Yin’s exhibition is a series of diptychs of nuclearrelated landscapes taken at the North Korea-China border and the United States. Chi Yin’s work explores issues relating to history, memory, conflict and migration, and their consequences. The artist was commissioned to produce this
series in response to The Nobel Peace prize 2017 winner–the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Across both countries, there are striking similarities in the landscapes–both natural and man-made. The artist’s intention is to let us suspend our sense of place and enter the realm of reflection and imagination.
Image: Sim Chi Yin, from the series Fallout (detail), 2017. Courtesy the artist.
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GEORGINA CUE (AU) Pictures [Premiere]
Inner North 56
Gertrude Glasshouse 44 Glasshouse Rd, Collingwood 5 February – 6 March Thu – Sat, 12pm – 5pm
Georgina Cue explores female identity through self-portraiture and performance in a new photographic series for PHOTO 2021. Cue is known for her ongoing interest in theatrical staging and narrative in photography. Referencing Dada, experimental film, constructivist theatre and graffiti culture, Georgina uses DIY materials such as cardboard, spray paint
and tape to create large-scale, vibrant and colourful stages. These theatrical stages then become the background for photographs in which the artist often features as the central protagonist.
Image: Georgina Cue, Orpheus, 2020.
AGNIESZKA POLSKA (PL) The New Sun [Australian Exclusive]
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Heide Museum Of Modern Art Kerry Gardner and Andrew Myer Project Gallery, 7 Templestowe Rd, Bulleen 20 February – 20 June Tue – Sun, 10am – 5pm
Agnieszka Polska’s recent digital media works investigate society’s shared experiences of environmental and humanitarian catastrophe. In an era of fluid concepts of truth, Polska uses fictional narrative devices such as artifice and myth to manipulate objective experiences of space and time. The New Sun was part of the artist’s winning installation for the National Gallery
Prize at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin in 2017. The work features a projection of the sun personified as an animated character who addresses the audience directly with scientific theory, poetry, hackneyed jokes and crooning love songs.
Image: Agnieszka Polska, The New Sun (Tear) (detail), 2017. Courtesy Żak Branicka, Berlin and Overduin & Co., Los Angeles © the artist. 51
Not Standing Still: New Approaches in Documentary Photography
[Australian Exclusive] Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill 17 February – 16 May Tue – Fri, 10am – 5pm Sat – Sun, 12pm – 5pm Mathieu Asselin (FR/VE), Broomberg and Chanarin (ZA/UK), Cristina de Middel (ES), Laura El Tantawy (UK/EG), Yoshikatsu Fujii (JP), Ashley Gilbertson (AU), Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad (IN/IN), Zhang Kechun (CN), Dana Lixenberg (NL), Max Pinckers (BE), Raphaela Rosella (AU), Alec Soth (US), James Tylor (AU) Curated by Daniel Boetker-Smith (AU), Pippa Milne (NZ) Associate Curator: Gareth Syvret (JE/AU)
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East 58
Featuring internationally renowned photographers and artists, Not Standing Still celebrates divergent and conceptual photographic processes that discuss current issues of environment, politics, warfare, judicial inequality, racism, history, and revolution. Over the past 15 years, documentary photography has been approached differently, and as a result, new ways of ‘telling’ have emerged. What was once the territory of the traditional photojournalist is now shared with photographers who see themselves as artists and collaborators, more interested in raising questions than in telling complete, digestible stories. The image-makers in this exhibition use contemporary modes of photographic storytelling. They promote personal connection and long-term interaction with a subject. They seek respectful representation of marginal voices, and they co-opt narrative structures, and even fictions. All this asks for a deep and meaningful engagement by the viewer to unpack the truths of each subject.
Image: Dana Lixenberg, Toussaint 1993, from the series Imperial Courts (1993-2015). Courtesy the artist.
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MARTIN SMITH (AU) I Bet You Think This Show Is About You
East
[Premiere] Sophie Gannon Gallery 2 Albert St, Richmond 18 February – 6 March Tue – Sat, 11am – 5pm
This exhibition by Martin Smith presents a continuation of two, long term projects that explore the structure, construction and understanding of personal narratives through the combination of text and image. Since 2004, Smith has been writing an auto-biographical novel where each letter is hand-cut from a photograph producing a memoir that is told visually and textually. The released letters, from the photographs, are then resurrected to form anonymous cyanotype portraits that question the influence of language in the construction of self.
Image: Martin Smith, Speech2, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Sophie Gannon Gallery.
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RECONFIGURED/REDISCOVERED
[Australian Exclusive] Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn Arts Centre 360 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn 23 January – 10 April Mon – Sat, 12 – 4pm Christian Capurro (AU), Ben Cauchi (NZ), Danica Chappell (AU), Daniel Crooks (NZ), Peta Clancy (Bangerang, AU), Izabela Pluta (AU), Robyn Stacey (AU)
East
Reconfigured/Rediscovered brings together a group of artists to extend perceptions of photography and imagemaking into new realms. Highlighting the permeability of photography, the exhibition questions the relationship between image and reality, asking how images operate, and how they can be created without a camera. Forms of photography that have been liberated from traditional relationships between camera and print are explored as the selected artists negotiate the possibilities of installation, time and space, and early photographic techniques. Featuring work by Christian Capurro, Ben Cauchi, Danica Chappell, Peta Clancy, Daniel Crooks, Izabela Pluta and Robyn Stacey, Reconfigured/Rediscovered challenges the very nature of pictorial representation—and photography’s inherent self-reflexivity—with examples of bold, boundary-pushing experimentation.
Image: Izabela Pluta, Iterative composition 1979 (pages 17-18 Australia), 2020. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Sally Dan-Cuthbert, Sydney. 55
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EYE TO EYE
Footscray Community Arts Centre 45 Moreland Street, Footscray 4 February – 20 March Mon – Fri, 9.30am – 5pm Sat - Sun, 10am - 4pm Jody Haines (AU), Julie Millowick OAM (AU)
Image: Julie Millowick, Limurru, 1976.
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Eye to Eye examines 46 years of womanhood through the lens of artists Julie Millowick OAM and Jody Haines. The year 1975 was a significant year for women’s rights–named International Women’s Year by the United Nations. Eye to Eye includes images from Millowick’s archive from 1975 to 1985 (the International Decade for Women), displaying a collection of photographs of Australian women in everyday life. Haines expands the conversation to the present with a series of new portraits, created in collaboration with local women and in response to the last 46 years. Central explorations include gender inequity, feminist futures, the politics of representation and where women see themselves positioned in 2021. This exhibition unpacks the development of social and political un/truths of past and contemporary women’s liberation. Through this collaboration, the artists present a visual symbol for what we can learn from the women’s rights movement of the past and how the conversation of gender representation is evolving today.
AMOS GEBHARDT (AU) Spooky Action (at a distance)
West 62
The SUBSTATION 1 Market St, Newport 12 February – 27 March Wed – Sat, 12 – 6pm Fri, 12 – 8pm
Collaborating with performers, choreographers and musicians including Melanie Lane, Oren Ambarchi, Bhenji Ra and Eric Avery, Amos Gebhardt brings a cinematic force to large-scale, moving image installations and photography. Gebhardt gives power to both human and non-human narratives in their explorations of the intersections between culture, nature
and the body, explorations presented now— for the first time—in this new exhibition. Centred on themes of identity, queerness, resistance and entanglement, this extensive series of Gebhardt’s works form a labyrinth of film and photographs that unify the artist’s practice in a bold new way.
Image: Amos Gebhardt, Family Portrait, 2020.
GUSTAVO GERMANO (AR) Ausencias (Absences) [Australian Exclusive]
West 63
The SUBSTATION billboards 1 Market St, Newport 12 February – 27 March
From the early 1960’s to the late 1980’s, dictatorships across South America were responsible for the murder, torture and disappearance of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Today, the families of those victims are united in the fight for ‘truth, memory and justice’. Starting with family photos, Barcelonabased photographer Gustavo Germano
creates a series of before-and-after shots that are as powerful as they are personal. In every image-pairing of Ausencias (Absences)—taken in the same place, decades apart—a loved one is present, then absent. Like the systematic erasure of a dictatorship’s crimes, a disappeared person leaves a void, and a call for justice.
Image: Gustavo Germano, detail from the series Ausencias (Absences).
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TRENT PARKE (AU) Ballarat Avenue of Honour
Regional 64
Art Gallery of Ballarat 40 Lydiard St N, Ballarat 23 November – 14 March Daily, 10am – 5pm
In honouring WW1 soldiers from the Ballarat region, photographer Trent Parke explores the tension that exists between an image captured at a moment in time, and the organic, evolving nature of a living memorial. Ballarat’s Avenue of Honour is one of the earliest-known memorial avenues to have been planted in Victoria during WWI.
In 2014, Parke created a series of images of trees in the Avenue for the international exhibition The First World War, presented in Bruges, Belgium. Drawn to the Avenue’s living memorial— where each tree stands for a particular life—Parke developed a work that illuminates the parallels between natural forms and the fates of the individuals they represent.
Image: Trent Parke, Acting Bombardier Joseph Roy Kinsman 34405, 24th Field Artillery Brigade, The Avenue of Honour, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, 2014, from WWI Avenue of Honour series. Purchased with funds from the Hilton White Bequest. Collection of the Art Gallery of Ballarat. © the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery.
TRACEY MOFFATT (AU), GARY HILLBERG (AU) Montages: The Full Cut, 1999–2015
Regional 65
Art Gallery of Ballarat 40 Lydiard St N, Ballarat 23 November – 14 March Daily, 10am – 5pm
For the first time ever, this exhibition brings together the full suite of eight montage films by Tracey Moffatt and her long-time collaborator Gary Hillberg. Created using deliberately-stylised artifice that references the history of art and photography, Moffatt’s work is celebrated for the masterful way it manages to communicate the highly personal alongside meanings of universal significance.
Montages: The Full Cut, 1999–2015 is an ode to cinema and to the cinematic form. Spanning Moffatt and Hillberg’s 16year collaborative practice, the suite of montages includes thousands of clips from Hollywood films, spliced together to create new narratives that tap into the humour and pathos of art, revolution, love and destruction.
Image: Tracey Moffatt & Gary Hillberg, Other (still), 2010, 7 minutes, looped video, sound. Courtesy the artist, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery and Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York. 58
DANICA CHAPPELL (AU) Far From The Eye [Premiere]
Regional 66
La Trobe Art Institute 121 View St, Bendigo 27 January – 18 April Tue – Fri, 10am – 5pm Sat – Sun, 12pm – 5pm
Drawing from a collaborative dialogue with chemical biologist Dr Donna Whelan from La Trobe University’s Institute of Molecular Science, Melbourne-based artist Danica Chappell presents a new commission for PHOTO 2021 across two galleries and a public artwork on the building’s façade that incorporates laser microscopy with various traditional and contemporary image-making techniques.
Working with the malleable photograph, Chappell establishes a grounding based on shadows activated by the photogram. Light, shadow, form, colour and actions collide as ‘apparitions of delectation’ in response to material and processual conditions. The exhibition forms part of La Trobe Art Institute’s Collaboratory series exploring collaboration in contemporary art practice.
Image: Danica Chappell, Far From The Eye (Fingertip glance #5) (detail), 2020.
PETA CLANCY Bangerang (AU) Undercurrent
Regional 67
Bendigo Art Gallery 42 View St, Bendigo 12 November 2020 – 28 March 2021 Mon – Sun, 10am – 5pm
During 2018-2019 Peta Clancy collaborated with the Dja Dja Wurrung community to investigate frontier massacre sites on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Undercurrent explores a powerful and evocative site now submerged underwater. At Bendigo Art Gallery, Undercurrent features large-scale photographic prints, an expansive wallpaper and immersive soundscape in conversation with 19th century European artworks from Bendigo Art Gallery’s
historic collection selected by Dja Dja Wurrung artist and curator Natasha Carter. Developed during the Koorie Heritage Trust’s residency program, supported by the Federal Department of Communications and the Arts’ Indigenous Languages and Arts Program, Gandel Philanthropy and with cultural support from the Dja Dja Wurrung community namely Rodney and Natasha Carter, Michael Bourke and Amos Atkinson.
Peta Clancy, Undercurrent, 2018-2019. Courtesy the artist and Dominik Mersch Gallery.
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DAMIEN SHEN (AU) A Stone from Another Mountain
Regional 68
Benalla Art Gallery Botanical Gardens, Bridge Street, Benalla 22 January – 21 March Daily, 10am - 4.30pm Closed Tuesdays
Born from the rich combined heritages of mainland China and the Ngarrindjeri peoples of South Australia, Damien Shen combines drawing with a wet-plate collodion photographic process to explore traditional imagery through a personal, documentary lens. For this exhibition, an extensive search through archival images of ancient Chinese paintings led Shen to discover that his
family name harkens from China’s Song Dynasty period. To create a self portrait that reconciles forgotten ancestry, known heritage, ancient past and immediate present, Shen has put his own likeness over an image of the Emperor on a horse, before placing the figure onto the Coorong (Ngarrindjeri homelands), alongside his immediate Ngarrindjeri family.
Image: Damien Shen, Know Yourself and You Will Win All Battles, 2019. Courtesy the artist and MARS Gallery.
MICHAEL COOK Bidjara (AU) Livin’ the dream
Regional 69
Horsham Regional Art Gallery 80 Wilson St, Horsham 23 January – 14 March Mon – Sun, 10am – 4pm
Michael Cook offers a retake on Australian history by imagining a contemporary Indigenous community with Aboriginals living the lifestyle prescribed by white norms. Carefully choreographed images reflect on notions of truth and identity, and consider how art and images shape history and cultural memory. Highlighting disjuncture between the
reality of Indigenous life and the white Australian dream/ideal, he raises the questions ‘what makes a person civilised?’ The images explore the ongoing effects of colonisation and cultural marginalisation, and suggests how different history might have been if those Europeans had realised that the Aborigines were indeed civilised.
Image: Michael Cook, Livin’ the dream (Vacation), 2020. Courtesy of the artist and THIS IS NO FANTASY.
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Special Projects Central
INSIDE OUT [Premiere]
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Fed Square Swanston St & Flinders St, Melbourne 18 February – 21 February
Witness Australia’s largest iteration of Inside Out, the global participatory art project initiated by French artist JR that transforms messages of personal identity into works of art. Following an open invitation for people
to send their photo and share their truth, hundreds of portraits will cover the surface of Fed Square’s iconic courtyard for the launch of PHOTO 2021.
Image: Melbourne, Australia, PHOTO 2021, Ishitha.
BILLBOARD PROJECT RAFAELA PANDOLFINI (AU) Myths & Facts
Central, Inner North, Regional 71
West Space, Collingwood Yards; 56 Rathdowne St, Carlton (Melbourne); Various locations along Hume Highway; and Platform 12 Redfern Station and 82 Redfern St, Redfern (Sydney) 6 February – 7 March Commissioned by West Space
Rafaela Pandolfini presents a procession of photographs displayed on 9 billboards dispersed along the Hume Highway between New South Wales and Victoria, culminating in inner Melbourne and Sydney. Myths & Facts interrogates slow violence at a policy level, from failures in the face of environmental emergencies to the slippage of the law. Phrases pertaining to the legal
definition of climate action and words drawn from environmental policies are transposed from official documents onto “chux” cleaning cloths. Blown up to billboard size proportions, Pandolfini’s photographs take on a forensic quality. The recognisable zigzag pattern of the chux is a recurring motif in the artist’s ongoing exploration of gendered and emotional labour.
Image: Artwork by Rafaela Pandolfini, Rozsa Pandolfini Kirkwood and Sabine Pandolfini Kirkwood.
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New Photographers
The PHOTO 2021 New Photographers exhibition showcases the work of five emerging artists whose practice explores alternative approaches to visual storytelling. Each artist was selected by SEVENTH Gallery and PHOTO 2021 from a shortlist of nominees put forward by established artists and educators from some of Australia’s leading art and photographic schools. SAM FORSYTH-GRAY (AU) Nominated by Hoda Afshar Photography Studies College BEC MARTIN (AU) Nominated by Sanja Pahoki, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne SARAH UJMAIA Nominated by Tamsen Hopkinson Monash University SORCHA WILCOX (AU/IE) Nominated by Patrick Pound Deakin University KAT WILKIE (AU) Nominated by Rebecca Najdowski RMIT School of Art
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SEVENTH GALLERY 213-215 Church St, Richmond 17 February – 6 March Wed – Sat, 12pm – 6pm Map: East 72
Image: Sam Forsyth-Gray, Frame Racking, 2019.
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Awards and Prizes BOWNESS PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE CELEBRATES 15 YEARS Smith & Singer 14 - 16 Collins St, Melbourne 18 February – 7 March Map: Central 73 In 2020, the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize marked its 15th year. To celebrate, Monash Gallery of Art has partnered with Smith & Singer to showcase the previous 15 recipients during PHOTO 2021 at their Collins Street premises. The Bowness Photography Prize is an important annual survey of contemporary photographic practice and one of the most prestigious prizes in Australia. PORTRAIT OF HUMANITY Various billboard sites in Carlton, Fitzroy and Collingwood 18 February – 7 March Map: Central, Inner North 74 In partnership with 1854—publishers of the British Journal of Photography—Portrait of Humanity is showing in Australia for the first time, as a free outdoor exhibition at PHOTO 2021. In the wake of 2020, Portrait of Humanity has asked entrants to shine a light on the spirit, strength and togetherness that has sustained our species throughout a dark time in history.
KASSEL DUMMY AWARD Le Space 1 Mater St, Collingwood 27–28 February Map: Inner North 75 Established in 2009 by the Fotobookfestival Kassel, the Award recognises the best unpublished photobook mockup of the year, with the winning entry produced and published. The 50 finalists for the 2020 Award will be exhibited as part of the Photobook Weekend. AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND PHOTOBOOK AWARD Centre for Contemporary Photography 404 George St, Fitzroy 27–28 February Map: Inner North 76 Presented by Momento Pro, the Award celebrates excellence, originality and ‘fitness for purpose’ in photobook creation. The 2019 finalists will be exhibited as part of the Photobook Weekend. NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE Presented by Murray Art Museum Albury, the National Photography Prize presents a selection of innovative photo-based practices from Australia. A virtual tour of the exhibition is available online.
INTERNATIONAL PHOTOBOOK PRIZE Map: Inner North 77 The PHOTO 2021 x Perimeter International Photobook Prize was launched to identify and publish a new photobook. From over 130 submissions, Roosevelt Station by David Rothenberg was selected as the winning project. With a text by David Campany, Roosevelt Station will be published by Perimeter and launched at PHOTO 2021’s Photobook Weekend. A display of Rothenberg’s images will be presented during the Festival at Perimeter, 748 High Street, Thornbury.
Image: David Rothenberg, Roosevelt Station. Courtesy the artist.
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Image: Hoda Afshar, Portrait of Behrouz Boochani, Manus Island, from the series Remain, 2018. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery. Winner of 2018 Bowness Photography Prize. 65
PHOTO Editions
PHOTO Editions is a new series of photobooks co-published by Photo Australia and Perimeter Editions. The first photobook—Emma Phillips: Send Me a Lullaby—will be launched at PHOTO 2021.
EMMA PHILLIPS (AU) Send me a Lullaby
Send Me a Lullaby is a love letter to a city undergoing immense change, created during a period of both urban transformation and global upheaval. Emma Phillips was commissioned by Photo Australia to make a photographic portrait of Melbourne in the lead up to PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. The resulting project is a reflection on connection, navigation and time, and the constantly evolving relationship between people and place. Phillips’ photographs contemplate urban, domestic and psychological space. Weaving
into this series are portraits of people Phillips has come across in Melbourne, capturing a living, breathing city as it responds to the fallout of bushfires and a pandemic. These disparate photographs taken across different seasons construct a dialogue between some of the city’s component parts—homes, shops, parks, streets—with archaeological objects from beneath the city, offering myriad stories to uncover and tell.
Image: Emma Phillips, from the series Send me a Lullaby, 2021. Image courtesy ReadingRoom. Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021. Supported by Hillvale. 66
Image: Emma Phillips, from the series Send me a Lullaby, 2021. Image courtesy ReadingRoom. Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021. Supported by Hillvale. 67
Online
Exhibitions that took place in advance of PHOTO 2021 are now available to view online with a combination of virtual tours, installation photos and essays. Online
THE IMAGE LOOKS BACK RMIT Gallery Jacqueline Felstead (AU), Joan Fontcuberta (ES), Forensic Architecture (UK), Generative Photography (UK/CH), Mike Gray (AU), Joe Hamilton (AU), Thomas Hirschhorn (CH), Rhonda Holberton (US), Fei Jun (CN), Amalia Lindo (AU/US), Rosa Menkman (NL), Tyler Payne (AU), QueerTech.io (AU), Joachim Schmid (DE), Winnie Soon (HK) Curated by Alison Bennett (AU), Shane Hulbert (AU), Rebecca Najdowski (US), Daniel Palmer (AU) Leading artists, photographers and technologists explore how notions of visual truth and human experience are shaped by new technologies of vision— including algorithmic processes, machine vision and networked circulation.
Image: Michael Gray, Batu Karas, 2018.
NO TRUE SELF Centre for Contemporary Photography Arvida Byström (SE), Thibaut Henz (BE), Artor Jesus Inkerö (FI), Hanna Putz (AT), Jana Schulz (DE), Andrzej Steinbach (PL), Thomas Taube (DE) Curated by David A. Kerr (AU) No True Self is a major exhibition of an emerging generation of critically acclaimed contemporary artists, featuring unique perspectives from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Poland and Sweden. The artists address important and universal questions of gender, sexuality, agency and cultural identity in the extreme present, representing the generation shortly before the digital native generation at the precipice of the post-digital, and possessing a variety of unique approaches to photomedia, truth and artifice, and the presentation of the human subject.
Image: Hanna Putz, Untitled, from the series, Everything else is a lie, 2018–19. Courtesy the artist.
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Online
THE NEW BLACK VANGUARD: PHOTOGRAPHY BETWEEN ART AND FASHION Bunjil Place
Online
Campbell Addy (UK/GH), Arielle Bobb-Willis (US), Micaiah Carter (US), Awol Erizku (ET/ US), Nadine Ijewere (UK/NG/JM), Quil Lemons (US), Namsa Leuba (CH/GN), Renell Medrano (US), Tyler Mitchell (US), Jamal Nxedlana (ZA), Daniel Obasi (NG), Ruth Ossai (UK/NG), Adrienne Raquel (US), Dana Scruggs (US), Stephen Tayo (NG) Curated by Antwaun Sargent (US) This exhibition presents new perspectives on the medium of photography and the notions of race and beauty, gender and power. From New York and Johannesburg to Lagos and London, the artists open up conversations around the roles of the black body and black lives as subject matter.
Image: Campbell Addy, Adut Akech, 2019 © the artist. Exhibition organised by Aperture, New York and made possible, in part by Airbnb.
AFFIRMATION Koorie Heritage Trust Paola Balla (Wemba Wemba/Gunditjmara), Deanne Gilson (Wadawurrung), Tashara Roberts (Dja Dja Wurrung/Yorta Yorta), Pierra Van Sparkes (Pibbulman) Showcasing some of Victoria’s most exciting multidisciplinary Indigenous artists, Affirmation explores the concept of truth in the context of place, ancestral identity and cultural pride. Hidden truths and practices of Indigenous knowledge sharing create a powerful hub for artists to controvert and create further dialogue on de-colonising established structures. In dramatically shifting the status quo, Affirmation generates new thinking and reflecting about the ’smoke and mirrors’ of truth-telling.
Image: Paola Balla, I Woke Up Like Dis, 2016.
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Online
THE BURNING WORLD Bendigo Art Gallery
Online
Hoda Afshar (IR/AU), Peta Clancy (Bangerang, AU), Michael Cook (Bidjara, AU), Rosemary Laing (AU)
Taking its title from the apocalyptic science fiction text of the same name by JG Ballard, this exhibition interrogates urban and natural landscapes to reveal darker truths about human inhabitations. Addressing the contemporary ramifications of past actions, the works hold confronting realities in tension with idyllic and iconic environments, challenging
dominant narratives to focus attention on what has been overlooked, denied or concealed. In particular, they draw upon colonial histories, fact and fiction, to consider the landscape as an amorphous political site.
Image: Hoda Afshar, Remain (still), 2018, 2-channel digital video, colour, sound. Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery.
YOU ARE HERE Town Hall Gallery
Online
Duha Ali & Justine Youssef, Ophelia Bakowski (AU), Miriam Charlie (Garrawa, Yanyuwa, AU), Club Ate: Bhenji Ra (PH/AU) & Justin Shoulder (AU) with Tristan Jallah (AU), Nici Cumpston (Barkindji, AU), Tammy Law (AU), James Tylor (AU), Anne Zahalka (AU)
You Are Here explores the connection and disconnection to country. For the First Peoples of Australia and those more recently arrived, relationships with the Australian landscape are defined by both a deep sense of cultural belonging and the country’s history of conflict and displacement. You Are Here is a meditation on ideas of
home and identity within the environment informed by cultural, personal and historical narratives.
Image: Anne Zahalka, You Are On Dharawal Land!, 2020. Image courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery.
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DESTINY NGV
Online
Destiny Deacon (Kuku/Erub/Mer, AU)
Destiny Deacon is internationally renowned for her darkly comical work that offers a nuanced, thoughtful and, at times, intensely funny snapshot of contemporary Australian life. By contrasting seemingly innocent childhood imagery with scenes taken from the darkest reaches of adulthood, Deacon uncovers disturbing discrepancies
between real and imagined representations of Australian Aboriginal life. DESTINY is a rare and unique insight into the life and work of one of Australia’s most daring contemporary artists.
Image: Destiny Deacon, Smile, 2017. Courtesy the artist.
SHE WHO HAS NO SELF Horsham Regional Art Gallery
Online
Minstrel Kuik (MY) Curated by Alison Eggleton (AU)
Minstrel Kuik’s art practice considers and questions the politics of place, family and cultural identity and how this intersects with personal experience. Born in Malaysia of Chinese ancestry, she lives and works in a suburban neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur where negotiating the tensions of different ideologies and social bounds is an everyday occurrence.
With photography at the core of her multidisciplinary practice Kuik works across the disciplines of drawing, photo books, fabric assemblage and installation. Interested in how the act of seeing is shaped by society, Kuik explores photography’s equivocal relationship to truth to understand the self among the complexities of modern life in Malaysia.
Image: Minstrel Kuik, Mimic la chinoise, 2005-19. Courtesy the artist and Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur.
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ROUTES / ROOTS Linden New Art
Online
Robert Fielding (AU) Western Arrente, Yankunytjatjara and Pitjantjatjara artist Robert Fielding’s new work is grounded in archival, institutional and community research. Led by an enquiry into cultural objects that have been collected and removed from country since the beginning of colonisation, Fielding raises questions about ownership of cultural knowledge, the institutionalisation of sacred objects, and change as an integral part of resilient cultures. Image: Robert Fielding, Echoes#1 (Tjalini), 2019. Courtesy the artist, Mimili Maku Arts and Blackartprojects.
ECONOMICS OF WATER Murray Art Museum Albury
Online
James Tylor (AU) Economics of Water maps the damage that has occurred to the Murray Darling River system, which for over 65,000 years has sustained life in what is now Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. Tylor has overlaid photographs with gold geometric shapes, symbolic of non-Indigenous agricultural practices, fisheries, water diversion and other aspects of settler infrastructure. Image: James Tylor, Economics of Water #2 (Divide), 2018. Courtesy the artist.
STAGECRAFT Art Gallery of Ballart David Noonan (AU) Stagecraft brings together silkscreen collages on fabric, tapestries and film by Ballarat-born artist David Noonan. Renowned for repurposing found photographs, Noonan uses images from his personal archive to create ambiguous works, often with a focus on a solitary haunting figure. Noonan creates new compositions using black and white images appropriated from sources including magazines relating to avant-garde theatre, film, design, architecture, dance and music. Image: David Noonan, Untitled, 2019. Courtesy the artist.
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Online
HOLD ON Geelong Gallery
Online
Jacky Redgate (AU) Jacky Redgate is known for the systems and logic that inform her sculptural and photographic works. Hold On reflects on how she has recalled the autobiographical images and subjects of her juvenilia, while continuing to make conceptually based photographs over the past decade. Blurring the lines between truth and untruths, Redgate’s works embody a cathexis on emotionally laden subjects. Image: Jacky Redgate, Unfold – Mirrors, doll, coaster and spoon set, toy sewing machine, 2016. Courtesy the artist and ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne.
THE MUSEUM OF THERE, NOT THERE STATION
Online
Patrick Pound (AU) Patrick Pound is interested in representations of things you can’t really see. For this exhibition, Pound responded to the specific peculiarity of presenting an exhibition that no one could attend. While the world was locked down (and locked out of the gallery), The museum of there, not there stood alone, unvisited but not unseen. The silent and empty gallery spaces were filled with a vast scatter-piece spread across the floor and walls. Image: Patrick Pound, The museum of there, not there (detail), 2020. Courtesy the artist and STATION.
SYMBIONTS STATION Guy Grabowski (AU) Image consumption is a part of our modern diet. Symbionts continues Guy Grabowsky’s exploration into the ways in which images are created, reproduced, deleted, edited, copied and pasted to create a warped perception of truth and reality. Literally translated from the Greek word for ‘living together’, the term ‘symbionts’ is used by Grabowsky to describe the co-dependence of analogue and digital processes in his photographic outcomes. Image: Guy Grabowsky, Disintegrated Surface, 2018. Courtesy the artist and STATION.
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Online
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ZANELE MUHOLI Somnyama Ngonyama & Faces and Phases Argyle Square
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BROOMBERG & CHANARIN Spirit is a bone Argyle Square
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MAIJA TAMMI One of Them Is a Human Argyle Square
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SILIN LIU I’m Everywhere michaels (rooftop billboard)
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HAYLEY MILLAR-BAKER I Will Survive State Library Victoria Forecourt
6 HODA AFSHAR Agonistes St Paul’s Cathedral (exterior) & Missing Persons (Nicholas Building) 7 SIMON FUJIWARA Joanne Anna Schwartz Gallery 8
SARA, PETER & TOBIAS The Merge 225 Bourke Street
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PHOEBE POWELL, KATE DISHER-QUILL Surge City Square 10
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16 EMMANUELLE ANDRIANJAFY Nothing’s in Vain Barry Street 17
JESSE BOYD-REID The Gift Barry Street
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KATHRYN MCCOOL Jubilee Years (1986-2020) Barry Street
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TAIYO ONORATO and NICO KREBS Continental Drift Barry Street
20 LILLIAN O’NEIL Everything Forever University Square 21
GEORGE GEORGIOU Americans Parade Laurens Street
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ATONG ATEM To Be Real Immigration Museum
28 AARON CHRISTOPHER REES Horizon CAVES 29
MAREE CLARKE Uncle Jack Charles (Men in Mourning) Scott Alley
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ALAN STEWART our truth, our history Swanston Street
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KENTA COBAYASHI Photographic Universe Franklin Street East
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FELICITY HAMMOND Fault Line Franklin Street East
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NICO KRIJNO GONDWANA BATHOLITH (1) Composition with both geological and photographic time Franklin Street East
SAM CONTIS Beating Time (Movement Study, After Lange & Muybridge) Barry Street
NATASHA HERTANTO, HELENA WIJAYA Legenda SIGNAL
PIETER HENKET Congo Tales: Told by the People of Mbomo Peter O’Callaghan QC Gallery
31 JUSTINE VARGA Tachisme Tolarno Galleries 32
33
PAT BRASSINGTON Night Swimming ARC ONE Gallery
34
PATRICK WATERHOUSE, WARLUKURLANGU ART CENTRE Restricted Images Collins Place
35
LUCAS BLALOCK More Bunny Duckboard Place
36
SARA OSCAR Most Wanted AC/DC Lane
37 SARA CWYNAR Rubens Sofitel 38
HEINRICH HOLTGREVE The internet as a place Windsor Hotel (rear)
39
KATE GOLDING Near this spot Gordon Reserve
40
LAURA DELANEY The Rise and Fall 99 Spring Street (exterior)
41
ELIZA HUTCHISON Just wanted you to know Parliament of Victoria (exterior)
70
INSIDE OUT Federation Square
71
RAFAELA PANDOLFINI Myths & Facts 56 Rathdowne St, Carlton
73
BOWNESS PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE CELEBRATES 15 YEARS Smith & Singer
74
PORTRAIT OF HUMANITY Various locations
JANINA GREEN, TORI LILL, ALI MCCANN, SANJA PAHOKI, AARON CHRISTOPHER REES, KIRON ROBINSON, EMANUEL RODRIGUEZ-CHAVES Not for the sake of something more Sarah Scout Presents
Key Indoor
75
Outdoor
Garden Variety: Photography, Politics and the Picturesque
Train Station
Landmark
Note: maps not to scale
CENTRAL Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Precinct 22
JAMES TYLOR Economics of Minerals
23
ANN SHELTON an invitation to dance
24
AMANDA WILLIAMS The Alpine Moth
25 Garden Variety: Photography, Politics and the Picturesque Melbourne Gardens
1 LUKE PARKER, Observatory Lawn 2 (HORTI)CULTURAL CAPITAL, Mueller Hall 3 GRACE WOOD, Rose Pavilion 4 EMMALINE ZANELLI, William Tell Rest House 5a YVONNE TODD, Rockery 5b YVONNE TODD, Clamshell Drinking Fountain 6 STEVEN RHALL, Separation Tree Rest House 7 JAMES NGUYEN, Long Island 26
Lych Gate
Kings Domain
FILIPPO MENICHETTI, MARTIN ERRICHIELLO In Fourth Person Istituto Italiano Di Cultura Batman Ave
Gate G
Al
ex an
dr aA ve
Yarra River
Gate H
Government House
Gate A
7 Ornamental Lake
5b 6
3 Visitor Centre
4
Gate O
Melbourne Gardens
Steep incline
5a
Gate B
2
Gate F
24, 22, 23
Gate C
Dr Dall
as B rook s
Shrine of Remembrance
Bir dw
ood
Av e
Gate E
Anderson St
1
Gate D
Domain Rd
Park St
Domain St
26
South
5
HAYLEY MILLAR-BAKER I Will Survive Vivien Anderson Gallery
42
ATONG ATEM Monstera Obliqua MARS Gallery
43
BROOK ANDREW SMASH IT Prahran Square
See CENTRAL Royal Botanic Gardens Precinct map
Alexan
dra Ave
r
ive
R rra
Domain Rd
Ya
South Yarra Station T
Toorak Rd Chapel St
Punt Rd ilda
K St Rd
43
Prahran Station T
Malvern Rd
High St 42
Windsor Station T
Fi
tz ro y
St
Princes Highway
G
re y
St
Alma Rd 5
Inkerman St
Inner North 77 ↖
Alexandra Pde
Mater St 54, 55, 75
Kerr St Easey St
47, 76
52
Sackville St 53
Johnston St 74
74
74
71 50, 51
Victoria St 74
Perry St
74
45
Greeves St Bedford St
George St
46
74
Otter St
Stanley St Rokeby St
Moor St 48
Gipps St
56
Glasshouse Rd Wellington St
Smith St
Napier St
Brunswick St
Fitzroy St
44
Gertrude St
74
Langridge St
49
Victoria Pde
44 MICHAEL COOK Undiscovered THIS IS NO FANTASY
50 MASHARA WACHJUDY Always West Space
71
RAFAELA PANDOLFINI Myths & Facts Collingwood Yards
45
DAVID ROSETZKY Composite Acts Sutton Gallery
51
LEYLA STEVENS A Line in the Sea West Space
74
PORTRAIT OF HUMANITY Various locations
46
GUY GRABOWSKY, KIAH PULLENS Neither here nor there Sutton Projects
52
CHRISTOPHER DAY Inimical Cave LON Gallery
75
KASSEL DUMMY AWARD Le Space
76
AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND PHOTOBOOK AWARD Centre for Contemporary Photography
47
RUTH MADDISON It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Centre for Contemporary Photography
48 SHEA KIRK Vantages Daine Singer 49
79
LAUREN DUNN New Romanticism 28 Rokeby St, Collingwood
53 DANIEL SHEA Untitled Billboard 54
NANNA HEITMANN Hiding From Baba Yaga Le Space
55
SIM CHI YIN Most People Were Silent Le Space
56 GEORGINA CUE Pictures Gertrude Glasshouse
77 INTERNATIONAL PHOTOBOOK PRIZE Perimeter Books
East 57
AGNIESZKA POLSKA The New Sun Heide Museum Of Modern Art
58
MATHIEU ASSELIN, BROOMBERG AND CHANARIN, CRISTINA DE MIDDEL, LAURA EL TANTAWY, YOSHIKATSU FUJII, ASHLEY GILBERTSON, GAURI GILL AND RAJESH VANGAD, ZHANG KECHUN, DANA LIXENBERG, MAX PINCKERS, RAPHAELA ROSELLA, ALEC SOTH, JAMES TYLOR Not Standing Still: New Approaches in Documentary Photography Monash Gallery of Art
MARTIN SMITH I Bet You Think This Show Is About You Sophie Gannon Gallery
60
CHRISTIAN CAPURRO, BEN CAUCHI, DANICA CHAPPELL, PETA CLANCY, DANIEL CROOKS, IZABELA PLUTA, ROBYN STACEY Reconfigured/Rediscovered Town Hall Gallery 72
SAM FORSYTH-GRAY, BEC MARTIN, SARAH UJMAIA, SORCHA WILCOX, KAT WILKIE New Photographers SEVENTH Gallery
57
Ea
ste rn
Bulleen Road
Fwy Eastern
72
Templestowe Rd
Glenferrie Station T
Fw y
Burwood Rd
60
Swan St
Riversdale Rd
59
Mon as
h Fw
y
Ferntree Gully Rd 58
Pr
in
ce
sH w
Springvale Rd
y
Blackburn Rd
T
Glenferrie Rd
East Richmond Station
59
West 61
JODY HAINES, JULIE MILLOWICK Eye to Eye Footscray Community Arts Centre
62
AMOS GEBHARDT Spooky Action (at a distance) The SUBSTATION
63
GUSTAVO GERMANO Ausencias (Absences) THE SUBSTATION billboards
Barkly St
Hopkins St Footscray Station T
Pr
hall St
Footscra y
y
Hw
White
in
s ce
61
Somerville Rd
Francis St
urn Melbo
W Gate Fwy
W
e Rd
Blackshaws Rd
Newport Station T Mason St
62 63
Ga te Br id
ge
Rd
Regional 64
TRENT PARKE Ballarat Avenue of Honour Art Gallery of Ballarat
65
TRACEY MOFFATT, GARY HILLBERG Montages: The Full Cut, 1999-2015 Art Gallery of Ballarat
66
DANICA CHAPPELL Far From The Eye La Trobe Art Institute
68 DAMIEN SHEN A Stone from Another Mountain Benalla Art Gallery 69 MICHAEL COOK Livin’ the dream Horsham Regional Art Gallery 71
RAFAELA PANDOLFINI Myths & Facts Various locations along Hume Highway
67 PETA CLANCY Undercurrent Bendigo Art Gallery
71 68 Benalla 69 Horsham
66, 67 Bendigo
71
64, 65
Ballarat Melbourne
82
Acknowledgements
BOARD Mark Henry (Chair) Bill Bowness AO Naomi Milgrom AC Elias Redstone
TEAM Artistic Director: Elias Redstone Executive Director: Clare McKenzie Producer: Brendan McCleary Producer: Linsey Gosper Producer: Rachel Ciesla (till May 2020) Communications: Dean Worthington Administrator: Jennifer Ma Accountant: Renee Hoy Copywriter: Genevieve Callaghan Interns: Karl Halliday, Philippa Griffin, Allie Marumo AGENCIES Design: U-P Publicists: Zilla & Brook Legal: Maddocks INTERNATIONAL CURATORS PROGRAM Thank you to Mikala Tai, Amrit Gill, Joanna Bayndrian and Katrina Schwarz at Australia Council for the Arts. STUDENT INTENSIVE Thank you to Shannon Ghannam at Magnum Photos. Supported by Creative Victoria. 11 PALMER PARADE Photo Australia is generously hosted by Naomi Milgrom AC.
ADVISORS Arts Access Victoria (Caroline Bowditch & Phil Noack) Daniel Boetker-Smith Naomi Cass Léuli Eshrāghi Alona Pardo Isobel Parker Philip Shoair Mavlian Pippa Milne Kimberley Moulton Liz Nowell Daniel Palmer Patrick Pound
FIRST NATIONS ADVISORY COMMITTEE Uncle Bill Nicholson Jnr (Chair) Tiffany Garvie Jarra Karalinar Steel Alan Stewart
We wish to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has supported PHOTO 2021 from the initial idea through to delivering our first Festival, including Her Excellency the Honourable Linda Dessau AC, Governor of Victoria; Jacinta Allan MP; Danny Pearson MP; Lord Mayor Sally Capp, Councillor Rohan Leppert, John Cunningham and Jo Mair at City of Melbourne; Andrew Abbott, Jane Crawley and team at Creative Victoria; Mary Parker at the Metro Tunnel Creative Program and Luke Diggins at Rail Projects Victoria; Sam Redstone, Jen Zielinska, Louise Nicholson, Genevieve Timmons, Alexandra Zafiriou, Michele Cooper-Hede and Robyn Batson at 11 Palmer Parade; Brook Andrew, Bill Henson, Rose Hiscock, Natasha Bowness, Dr Kathy Alexander, Craig Holland, Louise Wilkinson, Pollyanna Whitman and Susan Cohn for advice along the way; Justine Ellis, Dan Rule and Sadie at Perimeter; Debbie Prouse, Rebecca Norris, Lyndall Willis, Patricia Karallis, Jessica Ibacache and Imogen Henry; Paul Marcus Fuog, Uriah Gray, and team for designing our vision; and—for being there every step of the way— Sebastian Coles. Thank you to our incredible exhibition and program partners, donors, sponsors, advisors, and to all our volunteers and interns. Above all, a massive thank you to all the participating artists and their respective galleries.
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Donors
We would like to warmly thank our current patrons for their generous donations to support PHOTO 2021
Founding Patrons
Visionary $20,000+
Bill Bowness AO Mark Henry Naomi Milgrom AC
Katie and Ron Dewhurst Jo Horgan and Peter Wetenhall
Champion $10,000+
Benefactor $5,000+
Tony Osmond and Fiona Griffiths Kallie Blauhorn and Andrew Penn Jane Hansen AO Linda Herd Peter Jopling AM QC Louise and Martyn Myer Foundation Bruce Parncutt AO Michael and Emily Tong
Morena Buffon and Santo Cilauro Tania and Sam Brougham Milton and Penny Harris David and Megan Laidlaw Sonia Payes Ricci Swart
And thank you to our friends and supporters Helen and Tony Gandel, Charles and Leah Justin, Robert and Jasmine Dindas, Jennifer and Greg Goodman, Anne Davies, William Debois, Mike Reed, Catherine Rogers, Irene Sutton
Support Become a donor of Photo Australia
PHOTO International Festival of Photography brings together the Victorian, Australian and global photographic sector together like never before, providing a central point in which artists, industry and audiences can collaborate to create an event of significance and scale not seen in Australia by the photographic community. Our generous supporters help us to take the Festival to the streets of Melbourne, commissioning artists to create extraordinary new work at an urban scale, presented at unexpected sites throughout Melbourne. Our outdoor program introduces audiences to contemporary photographic practice without having to walk into a venue, sparking curiosity to further explore the expansive exhibition program.
84
Each Festival focuses on a single central contemporary theme from multiple perspectives providing a platform for diverse voices, views and approaches to be amplified, heard and celebrated through the medium of photography.
BECOME A PATRON If you would like to become a patron, please contact Executive Director Clare McKenzie clare@photo.org.au or visit photo.org.au/support.
Our patrons support Photo Australia to: • commission artists to create extraordinary new work for our Outdoor program • co-publish PHOTO EDITIONS with Perimeter • provide professional development opportunities to emerging Australian photographers • deliver an ambitious events program that engages deeply with the Festival theme, exploring key social, political and cultural issues • reach new communities with our far-reaching program of exhibitions and events
Photo Australia is an endorsed Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) and all donations over $2 are tax deductible.
Image: Hoda Afshar, from the series Agonistes (2020). Courtesy the artist and Milani Gallery. Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021—see page 13. 85
Partners Founding Partners
Government Partners
Major Partners
Commissioning Partners
Education Partners
Hotel Partner
Supporters
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Communication Partners
Exhibition and Program Partners
All information in this publication is correct at the time of printing. For any updates to the program please visit photo.org.au or our partners’ websites. 87
Aaron Christopher Rees Adrienne Raquel Agnieszka Polska Alan Stewart Alec Soth Ali McCann Amalia Lindo Amanda Williams Amos Gebhardt Andrzej Steinbach Ann Shelton Anne Zahalka Arielle Bobb-Willis Artor Jesus Inkerö Arvida Byström Ashley Gilbertson Atong Atem Awol Erizku Bec Martin Ben Cauchi Brook Andrew Broomberg & Chanarin Campbell Addy Christian Capurro Christopher Day Club Ate: Bhenji Ra & Justin Shoulder Cristina de Middel Damien Shen Dana Lixenberg Dana Scruggs Danica Chappell Daniel Crooks Daniel Obasi Daniel Shea David Noonan David Rosetzky Deanne Gilson Destiny Deacon Duha Ali & Justine Youssef Eliza Hutchison Emanuel Rodriguez-Chaves Emma Phillips Emmaline Zanelli Emmanuelle Andrianjafy Fei Jun Felicity Hammond Forensic Architecture Gauri Gill & Rajesh Vangad Generative Photography George Georgiou Georgina Cue Grace Wood Gustavo Germano
Guy Grabowsky Hanna Putz Hayley Millar-Baker Heinrich Holtgreve Helena Wijaya Hoda Afshar Izabela Pluta Jacky Redgate Jacqueline Felstead Jamal Nxedlana James Nguyen James Tylor Jana Schulz Janina Green Jesse Boyd-Reid Joachim Schmid Joan Fontcuberta Jody Haines Joe Hamilton Julie Millowick Justine Varga Kat Wilkie Kate Disher-Quill Kate Golding Kathryn McCool Kenta Cobayashi Kiah Pullens Kiron Robinson Laura Delaney Laura El Tantawy Lauren Dunn Leyla Stevens Lillian O’Neil Lucas Blalock Luke Parker Maija Tammi Maree Clarke Martin Errichiello & Filippo Menichetti Martin Smith Mashara Wachjudy Mathieu Asselin Max Pinckers Micaiah Carter Michael Cook Mike Gray Minstrel Kuik Miriam Charlie Nadine Ijewere Namsa Leuba Nanna Heitmann Natasha Hertanto Nici Cumpston Nico Krijno
Ophelia Bakowski Paola Balla Pat Brassington Patrick Pound Patrick Waterhouse Peta Clancy Phoebe Powell Pierra Van Sparkes Pieter Henket QueerTech.io Quil Lemons Rafaela Pandolfini Raphaela Rosella Renell Medrano Rhonda Holberton Robert Fielding Robyn Stacey Rosa Menkman Rosemary Laing Ruth Maddison Ruth Ossai Sam Contis Sam Forsyth-Gray Sanja Pahoki Sara Cwynar Sara Oscar Sara, Peter & Tobias Sarah Ujmaia Shea Kirk Silin Liu Sim Chi Yin Simon Fujiwara Sorcha Wilcox Stephen Tayo Steven Rhall Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs Tammy Law Tashara Roberts Thibaut Henz Thomas Hirschhorn Thomas Taube Tori Lill Tracey Moffatt & Gary Hillberg Trent Parke Tristan Jallah Tyler Mitchell Tyler Payne Warlukurlangu Art Centre Winnie Soon Yoshikatsu Fujii Yvonne Todd Zanele Muholi Zhang Kechun
+ Bowness Photography Prize celebrates 15 years, Portrait of Humanity, Kassel Dummy Award, Australia & New Zealand Photobook Award, International Photobook Prize, National Photography Prize and more
photo.org.au
@photofestivalau