fallen depths.

 

A self portrait, at home.

pulleys and thread

the shadows

Every year photography magazine Capture Mag seeks submissions from photographers which then becomes The Annual.  I submitted some work and as I got them together I realised there's a lack of faces and how dark all my work is!  Which also makes me think how it's the opposite of wedding photography...

 

These images are from the following series - #currentmood, thisplace., This Wild Song and onefourfour.

Good luck to all the photographers that have entered, can't wait to see what gets selected for the mag!

orbital exhibition

At the beginning of the year I was invited to create work for a new community space in Altona Meadows called Orbital which is run by Hobsons Bay City Council.  Heather van Heerwaarden curated the show and I was joined by Naomi Nicholls and Larissa MacFarlane who are fellow onefourfour-ers!  The exhibition space consists of 6 lightboxes so we had 2 each to make site specific work for.

I decided to create the work in Altona Meadows and photograph my response to the environment.  Well, my 7yo pressed the shutter for me and we spent a lot of time taking photos of him jumping and running towards the camera......  He's obsessed with stop-motion animation!

The weather was pretty crazy that day, when we got there it was thick cloud and the light was dark and almost foggy which was great for me!  But by the time we wandered around for ages trying to decide on two perfect spots the bright midday sun came out shining.  I'm always happy to work with the elements so we carried on.

The first image we shot was some rocks amongst the grass with the city in the background.  I really wanted to do something different for this exhibition and I had planned to show this image as a series of four scrolls that fit together.  In the end I used four different images which I printed, rolled into scrolls and lined up to expose different parts of each image.

We then shot the following image and the plan for this one was to sew gumleaves from the dress with all the cotton exposed, I absolutely love sewing into photographs and want to do more of it but haven't had the time to just play and experiment.

It was an interesting process creating work for a particular size and trying something new, I forgot what it's like to get out of my comfort zone!  That's never good, I have a bunch of ideas I want to try and need to make more time for being uncomfortable in my work.

We had our photo taken with the mayor one night and I super quickly (had the boys with me causing a ruckus) took some photos of the work all lit up and it looks great.  The work will be there until August so if you happen to be visiting Aldi's in Altona Meadows....

Larissa staged handstands all over Altona Meadows and documented the process...

Naomi created a site specific installation for one of the lightboxes and some teeny tiny art books for the peep hole...

And here's how mine turned out, I think I'd like to print the leaning one full frame and sew the leaves on again and get it framed.  I really do love the sewing, or adding other mediums to make the photo more than a straight print.  Just like how I love to create installations when I'm exhibiting work so it's not just a line of photos on the wall.  Maybe I want to make my work a fuller experience?  That's not quite the right word I'm looking for, fuller experience sounds a bit arrogant or something...

Anyhoo I want to say a HUGE thank you to Hobsons Bay City Council for supporting the arts, they've commissioned me for a variety of things over the years and I really appreciate it.  Thanks to Heather for curating the show and giving us free reign on what we wanted to create.  It's been awesome.

This Wild Song - new website!

I'm so excited to have finished the This Wild Song website and it's now live!  There's a list of the artists involved with the first few interviews, plus you can join the This Wild Song mailing list to be notified when a new artist is featured on the site!

This is my portrait of Nell and you can read my interview with her here.  I'll write a Behind The Scenes post about my shoot with her soon! x

Ps. I now have an instagram account dedicated to the artists of This Wild Song at @thiswildsong

pulleys and thread

BTS with MISO for This Wild Song

 

I was thrilled when Stanislava Pinchuk aka MISO agreed to be a part of This Wild Song.  I absolutely love her work and she generously gave me her time two days before she's was going overseas for 6 months.

The theme behind the TWS portraits is for the artist to become a part of their work so for MISO I wanted her to be absorbed in the galaxy or stars.  I used The Art Room to shoot in and hung lights from the roof to encase her but it wasn't quite the look I was after.  I then projected a galaxy onto her which worked great, MISO had also made a small work to project light through but the light I had wasn't strong enough which was really disappointing!  I shot digital, 35mm film and some polaroids which I need to scan.  

These are my favourites, there were so many great shots which is always a good thing!  The portrait I've chosen for TWS will be revealed on the website I'm building as we speak, I'll hopefully finish it in a couple of weeks after I've gotten past some other deadlines.

A huge thank you to Stanislava for not only saying yes, but saying yes to squeezing in the shoot, and just being lovely in general :)

Ps. I've now created an instagram account dedicated to this project which you can follow at @thiswildsong