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Wednesday-Friday 1-6,
Saturday – Sunday 11-4
Opening: Friday November 1 , 6pm
Cresciani’s artworks explore redundancy and urban change. His interest is in objects, structures, buildings and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Waste centres, derelict service stations, road works, car parks and abandoned factories. Beauty is found in these places of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence. Inverted images of rubbish emphasise the negative side of consumerism, like an x-ray points out disease. Cracked car windows and night road works are a metaphor for the central place roads play in capitalism.
A western Sydney car recycling yard houses hundreds of smashed cars, row upon row with their bonnets up. Car-lovers stroll through the space to purchase spare parts. The interesting patterns on the cracked safety glass look like street networks seen from above, recalling Sydney’s current road expansions cutting new paths through cities, suburbs and the bush, bringing people and products together. Capitalism depends so much on our ever-expanding road networks. They define movement and life and gobble up land and livelihoods.
The cracked glass is a metaphor for these interconnections made by roads and their central place in capitalism. Through the shattered glass we see the dark nature of rampant consumerism and the devastation of our environment that is required to sustain it. Both the smashed cars and our road networks share redundancy. The black and white images reference our impaired perception of what we are doing to our world: For now we see through a glass, darkly.
EMILIO CRESCIANI
Emilio Cresciani works as a freelance photographer and a photographic artist, based in Sydney.
Since graduating from Sydney College of Arts in 2012, Emilio has built a solid reputation amongst his peers, with the number of awards and exhibitions.
Most recently, Emilio was a finalist in the prestigious Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) 2019 Bowness Photography Prize.
Other achievements include;
His artwork explores the intersection between our modern consumer lifestyle and redundancy, waste and urban change. His interest is in objects, structures and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Waste centres, derelict service stations, road works, car parks and abandoned factories. Beauty is found in these places of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence.
His recent series include: Through a Glass, Darkly – cracked safety glass patterns from smashed cars resemble google view, recalling road expansions bringing people and products together. The cracked car windows and another series documenting night road works are a metaphor for the central place roads play in capitalism. Italo Calvino suggests that we are all defined by what we throw away and in FACE2FACE 2016 friends’ weekly waste was superimposed onto their portraits. In Remains of the Day 2012 close-ups of rubbish in waste centres and landfills was the focus, the remains of our consumer culture. The inverted images of rubbish emphasise the negative side of consumerism, like an x-ray points out disease.
Current works in progress look at the effects of our wasteful society – deforestation, contamination of rivers, oil slicks and ice sheets.
Cresciani exhibits regularly in solo and group shows including at Monash Art Gallery, gaffa, Photoaccess, Interlude and The Photography Room.
Michael Fitzgerald, editor, Art Monthly Australia: “Cresciani is staking a claim for his own sharply emerging photographic identity.. a keen photographic excavator of site, sifting through its layers and sediments.
The Gallery is open at exhibition times only – please check the ‘What’s on’ page for the next exhibition or workshop.
Thursday – Friday 1 pm – 5 pm
Saturday – Sunday 11 am – 4 pm
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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.
