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Refresh:
Five Years of Photo Technica
28
November 2003 -18 January
2004
Tue - Sun: 11.00am - 6.00pm
Galleries One, Two and Foyer
Since 1998, the Photo Technica Award Exhibition has
established itself as the country's foremost
platform for new photographic talent, representing
a crucial staging point in the careers of many
Australian photo artists. From its inception as a
national competition five years ago, the annual
finalists' exhibition has been dedicated to
promoting the work of photographic artists at the
difficult early stage of their careers, when public
exposure, critical dialogue and practical
exhibiting experience are all too hard to come by.
Each successive exhibition has drawn on a diversity
of photographic practices from around the country,
and while general trends and thematic concerns have
inevitably emerged, the sole curatorial premise has
always been to seek originality, technical
expertise and conceptual rigour.
This year ACP takes a look at the developing
practices of twelve past Photo Technica finalists,
and catches up with artists who have gone on to
significant achievements in their own work.
Refresh: Five Years of Photo Technica
showcases work marked out by its innovation and
ideas, while representing the geographical spread
and wide range of approaches of all previous
exhibitors. Spanning portraiture,
photo-documentary, abstraction, conceptual
photography, landscape, narrative and new media,
Refresh is a glimpse at the enormously
varied and consistently engaging body of work being
produced by new Australian photo artists both here
and abroad.
Our thanks go to Deborah Rando, Managing Director
of Photo Technica for her outstanding commitment to
the support of photography in general and this
prestigious award in particular over the past five
years.
Paul
Knight
FINALIST 2001 /
Victoria
cinema entrance (engorge), cinema curtain
(partite), untitled intersection (happy
palace), 2003
Paul Knight's highly-detailed large-scale interiors
fill the field of vision, inviting the viewer to
immerse themselves in a sense of actually being
there. Typically unpopulated, his images employ a
subtle surrealism and play of perspective to
amplify the psychological effects of the built
environment. Knight has exhibited at Heide Museum
of Modern Art, the Centre for Contemporary
Photography, and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces,
where he is currently undertaking a studio
residency. In 2002 he was commissioned to produce
work for a special edition of Big magazine,
edited by Daniel Palmer and Russell Storer.
Anthony
Curtis
FINALIST 1998 /
Tasmania
Streetlife, 2003
Anthony Curtis' ongoing photographic project
Streetlife is an intuitive reaction to the
urban landscape of Hobart. His visual mapping of
everyday experiences in a modern metropolis is an
affectionate but irreverent portrait of the
Tasmanian capital. Playing with the colours,
textures and unobserved details of the city's
surface, Streetlife reflects the sense of
fragmentation and the visual and social complexity
of urban life. Curtis' work is held in a number of
public and private collections, including the
Pinhole Resource collection in New Mexico, USA. A
recipient of Arts Tasmania's Wilderness Residency
and Artsbridge Grant, he recently completed a
Masters degree in photography at the University of
Tasmania.
Anthony Curtis is represented by Catherine Asquith
Gallery, Melbourne.
Selina
Ou
FINALIST 1998 /
Victoria
On Guard, 2003
Selina Ou's work has been included in exhibitions
at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Gertrude
Contemporary Art Spaces, Gallery 4A and the Centre
for Contemporary Photography. Portfolios of her
work have featured in Big magazine and
Photofile, and in 2003 she was awarded the
City of Hobart prize. Her hyperreal representations
of the generic spaces and roles in Australian
society address human displacement and isolation
within the economic structures of daily life. In
her latest project On Guard, Ou turns her
attention to the extension of corporate culture
into the space of leisure. She suggests that the
rivalry, negotiations, product placement and
networking that take place on the sporting field
are not all that removed from what takes place in
the office. On Guard begs the questions of
whether the standard of living purchased through
membership, accessories and equipment actually
matches the reality of what we achieve.
Selina Ou is represented by Grant Pirrie Gallery,
Sydney.
Belinda
Reily
FINALIST 2002 / Australian Capital
Territory
Perplexity, 2003
Perplexity continues Belinda Reily's
investigation of uncertainty and isolation, drawing
on the mood and lighting low-budget horror films to
create grainy images eerie, foreboding
environments. The sense of discomfort is amplified
by the tight framing and vertical orientation of
the work, and the artist's decision not to hang her
images, but have them resting against the wall.
Belinda Reily graduated from the Australian
National University in 2002. Her work is
represented in a number of collections, and she has
exhibited in Sydney, Canberra, Darwin and Dunedin,
New Zealand.
The artist would like to thank ArtsACT for their
support.
Sasha
Woolley
FINALIST 1999 / New South
Wales
Squatters, 2003
The subjects of the panoramic, colour-saturated
images of Sasha Woolley's Squatters series
are photographed in dwellings created in buildings
that they themselves have reappropriated (largely
from industrial use). Without the prefabricated
"mould" inherent in the ever-growing world of
suburban housing, these reclaimed spaces have
become unique and intimate reflections of
individuals who choose to live on the periphery of
society. Sasha Woolley's photographs have featured
in exhibitions at Photo Technica Exhibition Space
and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and in 2002
she held a solo show at Stills Gallery in Sydney.
In 2000, she was awarded Sydney University's
Chancellor's Exchange Scholarship, which enabled
her to undertake a residency at Silpakorn
University in Bangkok. She lives and works in
Sydney.
David
van Royen
FINALIST 2001 /
Victoria
Him Self, 2002-2003
David van Royen's ongoing Him Self project
is an attempt to capture the 'pause' between action
and reflection in a series of male subjects within
the same twenty- to thirty-something age group.
These works hover somewhere between
photo-documentary and posed portraiture, directed
by the artist to some degree, but set in the
subject's own home with their own clothes and their
own accoutrements. As such it is a collaborative
process between photographer and subject, and the
resultant images are a study in 'male-ness' not as
a singular masculinity, but rather as multiple
masculinities. Van Royen has held solo exhibitions
in Australia and New Zealand. He was recently
profiled in Real Time's 'Scan' issue, and
an image from his Clutch, Gear and Silence
series appeared on the cover of Photofile.
He is currently completing a Master of Media Arts
at RMIT, and lives and works in Melbourne.
Rebecca
Ann Hobbs RUNNER-UP
2001 / USA
Blizzard, 2003
Rebecca Ann Hobbs is a recipient of the Proud
Friends of the VCA Acquisitive Prize, the National
Gallery of Victoria Trustee Award and the 2003
Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. Her
solo exhibitions include Suck Roar at the
Centre for Contemporary Photography and To April
Love May at Linden Contemporary Arts. She
graduated with from the Victorian College of the
Arts in 2002, and is currently studying at
California Institute of the Arts. Produced with
sound artist Felicity Mangan, Blizzard
features the artist as a DIY polar explorer,
complete with artificial snowstorm. The video was
shot with a camera mounted at the end of a gym
treadmill while the artist was thinking about 'bad
sets, plastic and magical faraway places.'
Marco
Masci
FINALIST 1998 /
USA
Portraits of the Classical Male Body,
2001-2003
Marco Masci's work has featured in a number of solo
and group exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney and New
York, including the ACP exhibition Minimal.
In 2000 he won a Samstag International Visual Arts
Scholarship to study at the School of Visual Arts
in New York, where he currently lives and works.
For Portraits of the Classical Male Body
Masci has photographed concise descriptions taken
from escort advertisements in the gay press,
separating them from the images of bare male bodies
they usually accompany. With the minds eye the only
possible site for the image to exist, he seeks to
implicate the viewer in the body's objectification.
For Masci, these advertisements function as
'contemporary Michelangelos' - idealised
representations of the male body.
Sharon
Green
FINALIST 2000 /
Queensland
The Sacred and the Profane,
2001-2003
Winner of the Macgregor Prize for Photography in
2000, Sharon Green has exhibited widely in
Australia and abroad. The work presented here
includes images created during her residency at
Prague Centre for Contemporary Art's Jeleni Studio
as well as more recent photographs. Green is
interested in the notion of the woman as both
decorator and decoration, and the construction of
female sexuality throughout history, particularly
during the baroque period. Through evocative
architectural and interior spaces, dramatic still
life tableaux and representations of the female
figure itself, she creates a highly textured,
lushly coloured narrative drawing a parallel
between women and the societies they inhabit.
Sharon Green is represented by Metro 5 Gallery,
Melbourne and Art Galleries Schubert, Gold
Coast.
Alexandra
Cornwell
FINALIST 2002 / South
Australia
Absence and Essence, 2003
Alexandra Cornwell explores popular representations
of sensuality and femininity, particularly in the
classical cinematic styles of the 1930s and '40s.
In these selections from her absence and
essence series, she has photographed deeply
personal objects and spaces, filtering them through
the lens of nostalgia and memory in an attempt to
recreate aspects of this past time and style.
Cornwell has held solo exhibitions at Cube
Contemporary Art and CACSA Project Space and
participated in numerous group shows around the
country. In 2003 she became the City of Burnside's
Young Citizen of the Year for Contribution to the
Arts, and is currently undertaking a mentorship
program with acclaimed photo artist Deborah
Paauwe.
Alexandra Cornwell is represented by Cube
Contemporary Art, Adelaide.
Sarah
Smuts-Kennedy
WINNER 2002 / New
Zealand
Manifestation and Revelation,
2003
Sarah Smuts-Kennedy's Manifestation and
Revelation utilises a vertical diptych
structure to create a form of dialogue between its
two component images, a melodramatic pair of
cinemascope-sized hands and a more quiet,
reflective image that involves the viewer almost
having to stoop the see. For Smuts-Kennedy, this
coupling of the confident with the diffident, the
bold and the faint, is an enquiry into the ways in
which humans acquire and achieve certainty of
knowledge, self and their inner and outer worlds.
Sarah Smuts-Kennedy's work has been included in
exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales,
Gallery Barry Keldoulis and Te Tuhi The Mark in
Auckland. She is currently based in Auckland.
Sarah Smuts-Kennedy is represented by Gallery Barry
Keldoulis, Sydney.
Kim
Portlock
FINALIST 1998 /
Tasmania
In Utero, 2003
Kim Portlock's liquid emulsion prints are created
without a camera, using chemicals, gelatin,
photographic paper and light. The artist seeks to
explore images of the body in terms of its
relationship to matter and chemistry, and its
potential as a site for the processes of
transformation and mutation. Suspended, dissected
and disrupted, the images seem to merge towards
coherent representation, but ultimately deny
attempts at a resolution. Portlock has exhibited at
the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Linden
Arts Centre and Carnegie Gallery, and in 2002 her
work was included in the CAST touring exhibition
Clearing. She has also undertaken a number
of curatorial projects, and is currently completing
a Master of Fine Arts at the University of
Tasmania.
Image
Credits:
• Paul Knight, cinema entrance
(engorge), 2003
• Anthony Curtis, Thylacine,
2003
• Selina Ou, The Golfer, 2003
• Belinda Reily, Perplexity,
2003
• Sasha Woolley, Lisa, 2003
• David van Royen, Davood,
2003
• Rebecca Ann Hobbs & Felicity
Mangan, Blizzard (video still), 2003
• Reuben Marco Masci, Portraits of
the Classical Male Body, 2001-03
• Sharon Green, Sweet Entrapment,
2003
• Alexandra Cornwell, Absence -
Hope, 2003
• Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, Manifestation
and Revelation, 2003
• Kim Portlock, In Utero 1,
2003
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