Steven Rhall and Susan Fereday at the CCP
February 2013
Exploring current and historical narratives around relationships to land and perceptions of Aboriginal culture, Rhall’s series reflects on his experience as a Taungurung man within the broader scope of contemporary Aboriginal identity. Made throughout the Kulin Nation which envelopes Melbourne and a large amount of its surrounding area, Rhall’s images are records of connection and disconnection, as well as history and knowledge, informed by a variety of responses to each area and landscape of the Kulin Nation, their boundaries and social environments.
By looking at and recording the environment, how we interact with it and how it impacts our behaviour, Rhall’s ‘Kulin Project’ aims to inform his audience about the different meanings of Country through his own investigations and discussions with indigenous and non-indigenous members of the wider community.
Meanwhile, Fereday’s exhibition ‘Infinite Images’ revisits her two earlier works, ‘The Object of Photography’ (1994) and ‘Untitled Found Objects’ (1993) in the context of her new photographic series, ‘Infinite Image’ (2012), which looks at the infinite malleability of digital images. After many years of photographing small details of magazine ads to resembles classic UFO photos, Fereday’s arrangements of suspended mirrors and plates – along with shadow and refracted shapes they cast onto the gallery walls – the artist manages to evoke displacement of desire through the allure of commodity fetishism.
According to Fereday, if the object of photography is the illusion of the object itself and a reflection of our desire for the image, then in the digital era, that object is vast in ambition and infinite in potential.
“I like to tell people I’m inspired by the stars and dreaming but I’m also inspired by more mundane experiences of daydreaming and inner life. Most of the images are re-photographs and have their source in advertising or other found printed matter. Photography is all around us, I think, yet poorly understood. I’m trying to address the medium itself: ‘What is photography at its core and before anything else?’ It’s an invisible space, for one thing, richly available to psychic projection.”
Fereday says that alongside the CCP exhibition, she will also be launching her new book ‘The Object of Photography: A Theory of Photography In (My) Pictures’ at the CCP opening, as well as exhibiting a solo show at Sarah Scout Gallery in the same week.
“At Sarah Scout Gallery I will be showing a completely different body of work titled ‘All Seeing’. It’s about the process of seeing – seeing photography, seeing the world, seeing self and being seen.”
Steven Rhall’s ‘Kulin Project’ and Susan Fereday’s ‘Infinite Images’ will show at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, 404 George St, Fitzroy from February 8 to March 24.
Susan Fereday will launch her book ‘The Object of Photography: A Theory of Photography In (My) Pictures’ at the CCP exhibition opening on February 7.
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