August 2 – 12, 2017
A Photographic Presence brings together four contemporary photographers whose practice explores the idea of photography as a physical object. Polaroids, photographic emulsion, sculptural paper and manipulative processes take precedence over image. In this collection of works, narrative is explored through folds, splatters, rips and a smooshing together of chemicals, rather than the clean and neat conventions of figurative representation.
Exhibition Opening times
Thursday – Friday 1 pm- 5 pm
Saturday – Sunday 11 am – 4 pm
If we stop to look around us, images seem to have slipped into objectless, surfaceless apparitions–appearing with just enough time to disappear again. These young contemporary artists remind us of a photograph’s coming-to-be. Here, in A Photographic Presence, process becomes the journey; edges act as fuzzy gates, paper towers over tonality and surfaces open up for a sneak peek into the past.
This collection of photographs focuses on my exploration in the darkroom to equally represent both the imageness and objectness of a photograph. These photographs have not been created by using a camera or a negative but rather by sculpting the photographic paper before its exposure to light. It is thus the objectness of the sculpted paper and the exposure of light that creates the imageness of the photograph.
Gabrielle Wilton
‘To Vanish’ explores the collision between the extraction and construction of photographic narratives. As a series, it centres around a photograph I took whilst in Paris. I knew nothing of the gentleman photographed, and the only tangible trace from our interaction became the 6x9cm negative.
Fascinated by his demeanour and curious of his past, I made a series of prints using experimental techniques to draw out–extract–as much narrative as I could. Yet by doing so, I inadvertently began constructing my own narrative at the same time. Simultaneously isolating whilst constructing; creating whilst destroying.
Thomas Oliver
The Maud Gallery and the Queensland Centre for Photography are now closed until February 8, 2025.
We wish you happy and safe holidays.
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THE MAUD STREET PHOTO GALLERY acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land, and recognises their continuing connection to the land and waterways.
We pay our respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging and extend this to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.
