“Is/Is not”
Jack Brown, Christo Crocker, Janina Green, Annabelle Kingston, Sanja Pahoki, Aaron Rees, Kiron Robinson, Xanthe Waite, Lydia Wegner, Grace Wood and Justine Varga
12 Feb → 12 Mar 2016

Once the photograph signified that something was somewhere, in front of a camera. It was held up as a proof. Proof that someone took the photograph and that something was photographed. Extrapolated upon this connection indicated a truth in the being of one or both of these two conditions. In the post-indexical digital world this has changed to signify, at best, that within a photograph anything could be anywhere, everywhere and subsequently nowhere. The photograph can no longer yield any idea of truth beyond its own condition. If the photographic is freed from the condition of fidelity what then is its condition?

With the photographic being the dominant language of the 21st century this question is dominating contemporary art that has claims to the photographic. Is/Is not joins the global conversation addressing this question.

Using photographic and sculptural components Jack Brown’s installation practice is concerned with privilege, obsession and embodiment within photographic production. His sculptural components act as expansions of and obstructions to photographic space, while his photographic prints to act as literal support to and compressions of sculptural space. Brown’s work looks at the formal and material translations that occur between these two mediums as a way to unpick the idea of the image.

Christo Crocker’s works explore and dissect the photographic notion of the ‘decisive moment,' through a strategy of site-specific interventions and happenings. Crocker imposes an inherent risk upon the material, objects and the spaces he engages, through chance challenging a predetermined success and highlighting the inherent performative potential of any space. Extending upon this context-based practice, Crocker implicates the perception of the viewer, and the subsequent ‘here say’ derived, as the content of each work.

After initially training as a printmaker in the 1960s, Janina Green introduced photography as part of her practice in the early 1980s. Through writing about and making photographs Green came to understand that the politics of reproduction creates a contingency within photograph. Keeping this comprised state in mind, Green’s images explore the notion of ‘femininity’ as understood through the reception of images – where that ideology came from and how it proliferated. Janina Green is represented by M.33.

Through the use of humour and paint Annabelle Kingston looks to undercut the surety of the photographic image. These strategies question the position of singular visionary position in traditional photographic outcomes by providing a context including and outside of the frame, both literally and conceptually.

Sanja Pahoki works with photography, video, neon and text to explore observations from everyday life. Existential issues such as the nature of self, identity and the role of anxiety are recurring themes in her work. Sanja Pahoki is represented by Sarah Scout Presents.

Aaron Christopher Rees utilises photography, video and sculpture to articulate a discourse surrounding contemporary screen-based culture. Rees’ work aims to explicate the intangible nexus between technologically produced images of the world and the world itself.

Utilizing a range of material strategies, Kiron Robinson investigates the idea of doubt, faith and failure as constructive devices. Robinson’s work continually chases ways of articulating, that which by its own definition is beyond articulation. Materials are both what they are and and what they are not. Kiron Robinson is represented by Sarah Scout Presents.

Justine Varga creates photographic works that involve an intimate exchange between a strip of film and the world that comes to be inscribed on it. Employing analogue techniques, sometimes using a camera and sometimes not, she complicates both the act of looking and the experience of time. Her resultant photographs are documents of transformation and remembering. Justine Varga is represented by Still Gallery.

Xanthe Waite’s practice explores ideas of authorship and materiality in relation to the photograph and the archive. She is interested in creating interruptions and obstructions through which we encounter images. These sets of conditions aim to mine the potential inherent in the archive to activate a social function.

Lydia Wegner’s work develops through process, placement and the application of various effects. Materials and objects including wire, paper and plastics are arranged together to create intriguing yet delicate constructions that are then photographed against striking colour backgrounds. The final images appear as abstract visual entities, bringing attention towards the formation of surface. Lydia Wegner is represented by Arc One Gallery.

Grace Wood dissects the relationship between image and reality in conceptual photography through sculptural installation. Setting up the possibility of wholeness, as a stand-in for desire, within the photograph her careful installations prevent any one image ever being fully singular as other images and sculptural interventions intervene and intrude into the viewers space.

This exhibition is proudly supported by the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne.