Feast

Exhibition including: Narelle Autio, Pat Brassington, Jane Brown, Danica Chappell, Merilyn Fairskye, Anne Ferran, Chris Fortescue, Mark Kimber, Polixeni Papapetrou, Trent Parke, George Schwarz, Robyn Stacey, Stephanie Valentin, Justine Varga, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Emma White

Pat Brassington
© Pat Brassington

Press Release

Join us to celebrate a FEAST of photography for Stills end of year exhibition. Works are selected from a rich treasure trove of early and recent works by Stills Gallery artists that vary from large to small and in styles of presentation.

There is work being seen for the first time from new series by Polixeni Papapetrou, Narelle Autio, Mark Kimber and Pat Brassington including a new video by Kawita Vatanajyankur. There are old favorites from Robyn Stacey, Trent Parke, Anne Ferran, Merilyn Fairskye and George Schwarz. There is recent work that delighted audiences from Justine Varga, Jane Brown, Chris Fortescue, Danica Chappell, Stephanie Valentin and Emma White.

This exhibition is driven by a passion for photography in all its traditions and contemporary manifestations. Stephanie Valentin uses an electron microscope to enlarge and inscribe words on a grain of pollen creating a brain twister (Pollinate, 2002). Kawita Vatanajyankur performs in her brightly coloured videos with serious intent revealing women’s traditional roles in domestic and market labour in Thailand (The Scale, 2015). Robyn Stacey creates camera obscura works in hotel rooms with the inverted view outside projected dramatically onto residents within them (Guest Relations, 2013 and Cloud Land, 2015).

Mark Kimber and Polixeni Papapetrou play director in their own dramas both portraying masked characters. Kimber bases his Halloween style dress ups on Diane Arbus photographs (Vespertine Rituals 2015). Works by Papapetrou reveal that in her early photography she revered cultural heroes such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe (Elvis Immortal, 1987 – 2002 and Searching for Marilyn, 2002).

Narelle Autio shows samples from a powerful new series about road kill of native species in Australia titled Indifference, 2015. Trent Parke fresh from his major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia The Black Rose 2015 is represented by a magical early silver gelatin street work from Dream/Life and Beyond 2001 and colour and black and white work from his 2009 Opera House series Please Step Quietly Everyone Can Hear You.