Paris Photo 2015

Press Release

At Paris Photo 2015, Stills Gallery will present three contemporary Australian artists who offer unique, expansive approaches to the photographic medium. Magnum photographer Trent Parke transforms personal narratives into universal themes of life and loss; conceptual artist Patrick Pound finds amusing and poetic connections within a vast collection of found photographs; and Justine Varga uses camera-less photography to accumulate time and gestures within seductive fields of colour.

Trent Parke’s distinctive vision blurs the line between documentary photography and a psychological exploration of the medium. Following on from his solo exhibition at Paris Photo 2014, we will present key works from his new series The Black Rose (2015). The sudden, tragic death of his mother when he was 12 was the catalyst for this series. As an adult and a father of two, Parke was compelled to revisit this loss, to excavate and make sense of his memories. Created over seven years, The Black Rose comprises hundreds of photos as well as videos and texts, which explore universal themes of birth, death, love, loss, memory and the passing of time from a deeply personal perspective.

Cast adrift from their original creator and context, the photographs in Patrick Pound’s artworks find new life and meaning in his hands. He is a conceptual artist with a lightness of touch, a master of juxtaposition, whose thought-provoking assemblages of found photographs are full of pathos and whimsy. Pound’s The Big Sleep is a collection of photographs of people caught in a state of repose, all of which were purchased on EBay. Bringing together these disparate images, Pound treats the world as a puzzle, which could be solved, if only we could find all the pieces. There’s poetry to be had in the continuous attempt at finding new connections and in the successes and failures of human nature that they reveal.

Finally, we will also feature new, camera-less photography by Justine Varga. Selected from the series Accumulate (2015), Varga’s images build upon her earlier camera-less negative exposures, which tested the expansive capacity for film to record performative gestures, private spaces and personal experiences of time. Exposed over three-months during a residency in London, Varga’s negatives were left under doormats, placed on windowsills or taped onto bags. Despite this rough-and-ready approach, it is the intricacies of tiny scratches and markings, the idiosyncrasies of analogue film, which become significant compositional elements when the negatives are enlarged into prints. These imperfections embellish the works with the texture of space and time, as we encounter in lush colour Varga’s capacity to transform the mundane into the sublime.