MELBOURNE ART FAIR 13-17 AUGUST 2014 Stand E124
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CONTENTS NARELLE AUTIO
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PAT BRASSINGTON
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PETRINA HICKS
p 29
POLIXENI PAPAPETROU
p 37
TRENT PARKE
p 43
GLENN SLOGGETT
p 65
ROBYN STACEY
p 73
JUSTINE VARGA
p 79
KAWITA VATANAJYANKUR
p 91
JAIMIE WARREN
p 101
LIST OF WORKS
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NARELLE AUTIO
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Narelle Autio’s vibrant underwater images have won her widespread acclaim, exploring the significance of Australian coastal life in the national psyche In these works, created for the prestigious Basil Sellers Art Prize 2014, three largescale photographs depict the activities of the Australian Surf Lifesaving juniors, the Nippers... “From under the waves, Autio’s camera captures figures submerged beneath dramatic, billowing clouds of churning surf in a glassy sea of ultramarine. Here, under the water, the field of competitive play is reduced to a study of the human form in a dream-like arena.” (Joanna Bosse) Autio has an impressive list of accolades. She has won World Press Awards, an American Picture of the Year Award and a Walkley Award. In 2002, she was the first Australian to win the Leica Oskar Barnack Award with her series Coastal Dwellers, now the series Watercolours (2001-2004), which toured in Leica galleries worldwide. She has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions, Her work is held in the collections of the AGNSW, Parliament House Collection, Artbank, NGV, Samstag Museum of Art, Australian National Maritime Museum, as well as many private and corporate collections.
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PAT B R A S S I N G T O N
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Pat Brassington is one of Australia’s leading artists. Since the mid 1980s, when her work came to prominence, she has continued to surprise and beguile audiences with images that are pitched, in her words, ‘just off the verge of normality, into those dense patches where the commonplace goes awry.’ Blurring the boundaries of reality and fantasy, desire and repulsion, her images explore a surreal, dreamlike logic that challenges our senses and undermines the authority of photography. Like the Surrealists, Brassington often rubs contradictory everyday objects up against each other to create a fantastic and electrifying essence. Her works suggest an alternative plane for reality, a space where senses take precedence over the rational; where inner drives can be beautiful, brutal and unexpected. In 2013, Brassington won the prestigious Bowness Photography Prize with the image Shadow Boxer, from her series Quill (2013) as well as held a solo show of her new work In search of the marvellous at CAST. She has been featured extensively in national and international exhibitions, including the 2012 Adelaide Biennial Parallel Collisions; Á Rebours, a major survey exhibition at the ACCA (2012), whichis touring nationally (2013); a solo exhibition in Lönnstrom Art Museum, Finland, and the Helsinki Festival (2008); the Cambridge Road series at the IMA (2007); the 2004 Biennale of Sydney; and a major retrospective at the Ian Potter Gallery, Melbourne (2002). Her work is held in numerous private and public collections, including the NGA, AGNSW, QAG, TMAG, NGV, AGWA and Artbank.
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PETRINA HICKS
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Petrina Hicks’ immaculate, large-scale images and high definition video works are reminiscent of advertising imagery, yet they subtly and quietly unravel the relationship between beauty, representation and consumption. A particular focus for Hicks is the depiction of women. Venus, for instance, recalls Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, in which the feminine embodiment of sex, beauty and enticement, emerges from a seashell. But in Hicks’ Venus, the shell literally overwhelms the subject, a wry comment on the sexual symbolism commonly associated with women in consumer image culture. In New Age a lump of quartz rests on the groin of a classically posed nude who reclines against richly coloured drapes. Where the symbolism of a crystal meets another in the form of a classical nude, our reading of both is disturbed and distorted. Quietly heightening this disjuncture is a slight bruise on the model’s white thigh that brings us out of the classics and into the present, out of perfection and into reality. Hicks has exhibited widely throughout Australia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, USA, UK, Japan, China, Mexico and Brazil. Her work was selected for screening in the 17th International Videobrasil (2011) and featured in Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2010). She has been awarded notable prizes and residencies including the Josephine Ulrick Photography Award for Portraiture (2003), ABN Emerging Artist Award (2008), La Cité, Paris Residency (2008), and a Fellowship with the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany (2009). Her works are held in numerous public and private collections including the AGNSW, QAG, NGV and Artbank.
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POLIXENI PAPAPETROU
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Polixeni Papapetrou creates fantastical worlds that feature her children and have earned her international acclaim. Transformed with masks and costumes, and set against both real and imagined backdrops, the characters in her images seem to inhabit other times and places. By focusing on the theatricality of childhood, she explores a realm between the real and the imaginary, and also reflects on the medium of photography, with its capacity to bridge truth and fiction. Papapetrou has been the recipient of prestigious grants and awards, such as winning the Josephine Ulrick and Win Shubert Photography Award in 2009. Her work has featured in over 40 solo exhibitions, and over 70 group exhibitions in Australia and internationally, recently including Fotografica Bogota (2013); Photo LA 2013; Contemporary Australian Photography, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (2012); 3rd Biennale Photoquai 2011, Paris; New Worlds, Seoul (2011); My Australia, Taipei (2011); Highjacked 2: Australia and Germany (touring 2010-2011); Tales from Elsewhere, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2011) and Month of Photography, Bratislava (2010); 1st Biennial International Photography Invitational, New Mexico (2010); and Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2010). Her work is held in private and institutional collections, including the NGV, MCA, Museum of Fine Arts, Florida, National Library of Australia, Monash Gallery of Art, and Artbank.
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TRENT PARKE
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Trent Parke’s latest body of work The Camera is God (street portrait series) 2013 comprises a series of photographs of anonymous people standing on street corners. The subjects emerge with different levels of clarity. From far away, some are recognizable, only to evaporate into a pattern of grain close up. Others have faces, which have echoed and slipped away from their body. Parke’s camera is all-seeing, non-judgmental, indiscriminate. Within this sequence of images, a beautiful alchemy takes place – a combination of life and chance, light and photographic chemicals. Trent Parke, the first Australian to become a full member of the renowned photographers’ cooperative Magnum Photo Agency, is considered one of the most innovative and challenging photographers of his generation. Moving beyond traditional documentary photography, Parke sees himself as a storyteller. His images offer an emotional and psychological portrait of Australia that is poetic, dramatic and often darkly humorous. In 2014 Parke won the inaugural Prudential Eye Award for Photography in Singapore, and in 2013 he won the Olive Cotton Portrait Prize. In 2013, esteembed publisher Steidl is released two hardback publications of Parke’s work, Minutes to Midnight and The Christmas Tree Bucket. Both series portfolios have been acquired by the NGA. Parke has received numerous awards for his work, including five Gold Lenses from the International Olympic Committee, and World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000 and 2005, the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his series Minutes to Midnight in 2003. Parke’s self-published book, Dream/Life, was awarded second place in the 2000 American Picture of the Year Award for Photography Books. Parke’s work has featured in exhibitions and art fairs across the globe and is held in major institutional collections, including the NGA, MCA, NGV, AGNSW and Artbank.
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GLENN SLOGGETT
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Glenn Sloggett’s unique approach to street photography reveals how the grand themes of life - death, hope and failure – present themselves in ordinary suburbia. His images are distinctly devoid of people, and reflect the challenges and disappointments of everyday life through attention to overlooked objects, signs and spaces. Deceptively considered and darkly amusing, his photographs belie a deep empathy for their subjects, the neglected, lost, and unloved, and suggest that when all else fails, we might still find hope in humour. Glenn Sloggett has been exhibiting since the mid-90s. Recently he has been included in significant survey exhibitions of Australian art including Australian Vernacular Photography, AGNSW (2014); Melbourne Now, NGV (2013-14). In 2008, he won the prestigious Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Photography Award, and won the inaugural John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for an Emerging Artist in 2001. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including Cheaper and Deeper, a national touring show organised by the ACP (2007). Sloggett’s work featured on the ABC program The Art Life, and toured internationally in Photographica Australis (2002-04); and nationally touring New Australiana, ACP (2001). His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Art Gallery of NSW, Artbank and the National Gallery of Victoria.
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ROBYN STACEY
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Robyn Stacey is one of Australia’s most acclaimed photographers, creating spectacular and sumptuous images since the mid 1980s. Whether breathing new life into the historical collections of Australian museums, or bringing our gaze to contemporary society, Stacey’s work broadens our personal perspectives by allowing us to imagine other people’s private worlds. In her latest series Guest Relations, Stacey employs the non-digital process of camera obscura. Like pinhole photography, the camera obscura allows light in through a tiny hole in order to project a scene from outside onto an inside surface. Stacey recreates this process with ambitious scale and in unexpected settings, transforming the interiors of high-rise city chains and quiet coastline holiday destinations, into darkrooms for dramatically projected landscape vistas. As photography techniques have become more and more digitized there is a growing interest amongst artists in early photographic techniques. Stacey has been the recipient of major awards, grants and residencies. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the NGA, NPG, AGNSW, AGWA, NGV, AGSA, QAG, the NSW Historic Houses Trust, the City of Sydney, and Artbank.
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JUSTINE VARGA
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Justine Varga creates imagery that is minimal and sublime. Although she uses analogue techniques and works with great control of the craft, the results seem liberated from their medium to become more akin to abstract paintings. The delicate and balanced compositions evidence Varga’s obvious delight in the idiosyncrasies of light and film, and transform the emptiness and ephemera of her workspaces into quiet images that offer a space for respite and reflection. Varga has achieved significant recognition since graduating with Honours from the National Art School in 2007. She is the recipient of the 2014 Australia Council for the Arts London Studio Residency, and in 2013 she was joint winner of the Josephine Ulrick & Win Shubert Photography Award, a Finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize, and was a Finalist in the 2014, 2013 and 2011 NSW Visual Arts Fellowship for Emerging Artists. In 2012, her work featured in the prestigious exhibition Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art. Varga’s work is represented in the Art Gallery of NSW and numerous private collections.
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K AW I TA VATA N A J YA N K U R
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In Thai-Australian artist Kawita Vatanajyankur’s three videos The Basket, The Robes and Wet Rag, the artist is both symbolically and literally the material making the work—she is the rag that another woman uses to wash the floor, the wet clothing that is caught in a washing basket, and the fabric that hangs over a line, drying in the breeze. This self-deprecating humour belies a quiet challenge to high and low-brow distinctions. Vatanajyankur reframes the way craft and fabric-based production have historically been associated with women’s domesticity and considered a lesser form of creativity than the ‘fine arts’ of sculpture and painting.
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JAIMIE WARREN
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Jaimie Warren remakes images that she finds on popular Internet sites as selfportraits. In Celebrities as Food & Food’lebrities, Warren recreates images that digitally merge pictures of food and celebrities. For instance, in Self-portrait as Lasagna Del Ray by thestrutny (2012) Warren is, all at once, herself, a lasagna, and pop singer, Lana Del Ray. With her head on a plate, face covered in sauce, and hidden behind lips the size of sausages, Warren’s total immersion in popular culture is apparently as physical as it is psychological. The beauty of Warren’s gruesome self-portraits is that you come away with absolutely no idea of what she looks like. However, they do produce a highly sophisticated portrait of a contemporary self that is as malleable and messy as the unsophisticated make-up and materials that she uses to craft them.
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PETRINA HICKS
Nippers I, 2014 pigment print, 110 x 160cm edition of 6 + 1AP $5000 starting price
Venus, 2013 from The Shadows pigment print, 100 x 100cm edition of 8 + 2AP $6000
Nippers II, 2014 pigment print, 110 x 160cm edition of 6 + 1AP $5000 starting price Nippers III, 2014 pigment print, 110 x 160cm edition of 6 + 1AP $5000 starting price PAT BRASSINGTON Quiescent, 2014 pigment print, 80 x 63cm edition of 8 + 2AP $6600 The flight of the Duchess, 2013 from In seach of the marvellous pigment print, 83 x 120cm edition of 8 + 2AP $7700 Gifted, 2013 from In seach of the marvellous pigment print, 100 x 80cm edition of 8 + 2AP $7700 Asphalt, 2013 from In seach of the marvellous pigment print, 83 x 120cm edition of 8 + 2AP $7700 Blush, 2014 pigment print, 80 x 72cm edition of 8 + 2AP $6600 Night Shade, 2014 pigment print, 80 x 63cm edition of 8 + 2AP $6600 Rosa, 2014 pigment print, 80 x 62cm edition of 8 + 2AP $6600
All prices are for unframed prints unless otherwise stated. Prices include GST.
New Age, 2013 from The Shadows pigment print, 100 x 100cm edition of 8 + 2AP $6000 POLIXENI PAPAPETROU The Storyteller, 2014 from Lost Psyche pigment print, 100 x 150cm edition of 6 + 2AP $8000 TRENT PARKE NO 1225 Candid portrait of a woman on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 NO 893 Candid portrait of a man on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 NO 250 Candid portrait of a man on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 NO 388 Candid portrait of a woman on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 NO 522 Candid portrait of a woman on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500
112 NO 125 Candid portrait of a man on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 NO 014a Candid portrait of a man on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 NO 731 Candid portrait of a woman on a street corner. Adelaide, 2013 from The Camera is God (street portrait series) pigment print, 80 x 60cm edition of 2 + 2AP $5500 GLENN SLOGGETT Under the Weeping Willow, 2009 from A White Trash (Lost) Love Story type C print, 80 x 80cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1750 starting price (Life) Sux, 2011 from A White Trash (Lost) Love Story type C print, 80 x 80cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1750 starting price ROBYN STACEY Room 13 Cartwright, Michael and Katherine, 2014 from Guest Relations type C print, 100 x 133cm edition of 5 + 3AP $5000 starting price JUSTINE VARGA Sounding Silence #1, 2014 from Sounding Silence type C print, 141 x 111.5cm edition of 6 + 2AP $2500 Empty Studio #10, 2009 from Empty Studio type C print, 22.4 x 28.6cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1170 framed
Empty Studio #4, 2009 from Empty Studio type C print, 22.4 x 28.6cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1170 framed Empty Studio #2, 2009 from Empty Studio type C print, 22.4 x 28.6cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1170 framed Empty Studio #5, 2009 from Empty Studio type C print, 22.4 x 28.6cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1170 framed Empty Studio #6, 2009 from Empty Studio type C print, 22.4 x 28.6cm edition of 5 + 1AP $1170 framed KAWITA VATANAJYANKUR The Robes, 2014 HD colour video (portrait orientation) 4:03 minute loop $990 Wet Rag, 2014 HD colour video, 16:9 1:54 minute loop $990 The Basket, 2014 HD colour video, 16:9 2:15 minute loop $990 JAIMIE WARREN Self-portrait as Lasagna Del Ray by thestrutny, 2012 from Celebrities as Food and Food’Lebrities chromogenic print, 76.2 x 101.6cm edition of 5 + 2AP $1320 starting price Self-portrait as Tuna Turner by food’lebrities, 2014 from Celebrities as Food and Food’Lebrities chromogenic print, 76.2 x 101.6cm edition of 5 + 2AP $1320 starting price Self-portrait as Jack Pumpernickelson by breadpeople, 2012 from Celebrities as Food and Food’Lebrities chromogenic print, 76.2 x 101.6cm edition of 5 + 2AP $1320 starting price
36 Gosbell Street, Paddington NSW 2021 Australia tel 61 2 9331 7775 fax 61 2 9331 1648 email info@stillsgallery.com.au web stillsgallery.com.