LONG & STENT REFERENCED IN GREAT ART ESSAY

Using HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT’s work as a reference point, Irina Baconsky has penned an insightful essay for the British Journal of Photography on how visual language can productively infiltrate environmental debates.

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Field Sip XVII, 2018, granite stone, blown glass, water sample

Honey Long & Prue Stent, Field Sip XVII, 2018, granite stone, blown glass, water sample

"There is little doubt that documentary image-making has been instrumental in shedding light on the environmental crisis. Yet, the potential of abstract and even utopian imagery can be equally radical. What, then, may we ask, is the role played by the creative visual language and non-documentary mediums amid the urgency of the climate crisis?” questions Baconsky. 

The author goes on to elucidate how Long & Stent’s work dissolves the lines between the human and the natural, allowing us to see ourselves as part of (as opposed to separate from) our broader ecosystem: this being a vital first step it healing the man-inflicted wounds on the environment. 

Read the essay here >

LONG & STENT FEATURED IN MGA'S BOWNESS POSTER PROJECT

Honey Long & Prue Stent's work Mineral Growth from the artists' recent exhibition, Touching Pool, is currently displayed on the corner of Tinning St and Sydney Road, Brunswick.

This year the MGA is creating more opportunities for audiences to get up close and personal with contemporary photography. A selection of ten Bowness Photography Prize finalists’ works are now reproduced as large format posters and can be spotted around inner city suburbs of Melbourne.

In partnership with Shout Out Loud these brilliant works can be seen on the streets until 7 January 2021!

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA SOLO SHOW IN TASSIE

ANNE ZAHALKA has just opened Lost Landscapes – a solo show at Launceston’s Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery.

In this exhibition, Zahalka turns her lens towards QVMAG’s historic dioramas for the latest iteration of her series Wild Life: a project in which she unearths habitat displays from around Australia and re-imagines them to reflect contemporary concerns about the environment.

The popularity of dioramas has faded with the advancement of technology in museum displays. Today they are mostly lost or destroyed. This exhibition brings together QVMAG’s historic dioramas, restored as they were originally displayed, alongside Zahalka’s radial interpretations.

In an era of climate change awareness, this exhibition calls us to notice the drastic changes in the Tasmanian environment and our role in it’s degradation or preservation. Using digital manipulation to interrupt the idealistic and static landscapes depicted in the dioramas, Zahalka offers both apocalyptic and utopian visions of what our future could be.

Lost Landscapes continues at QVMAG until October 2021.

More information >

ANNE ZAHALKA IN 'KNOW MY NAME' AT NGA

ANNE ZAHLKA’s The Cleaner is part of ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.

This work is part of Zahalka's Resemblance series – a group of photographs based on seventeenth- century Dutch genre paintings. In The Cleaner we see the black-and-white tiled floor associated with Vermeer, and a painting on the wall that references the earlier art historical period. But at the same time, the subject wears headphones around her neck.

The image functions as a formal, contemporary portrait of a real person, but in a pastiche style quoting a genre of painting that has been functionally redundant for centuries. As Martyn Jolly observed, Zahalka “stretches the assumptions underpinning our conventions of candid portraiture”.

Through quotation and reference, the artist allows the visual images of the past to enter our contemporary world and create new meanings for new audiences.

More information >