‘I really enjoy intertwining art and commerce so that my work can exist simultaneously within the two worlds,’ says Australian photographer Rebecca Scheinberg. Her project Tohu va Bohu takes the glossy sheen of commercial photography, slick with exaggerated consumer desire, and then subverts it with a ‘trace of something more sinister, a hint that behind the veil of commercial charm, there is something darker at play.’
Transforming the way we see the everyday, our selection of photography talents each use their intriguing and sometimes unsettling compositions to explore themes of modern life.
Writers: Jonathan Bell and Ali Morris
Iris Aleluia’s photography is traditional in many respects, in that the master’s student’s approach is steeped in the assemblage of light, time and form. ‘I try to catch hold of these intangible moving shadows by drawing them while they are growing,’ she says. The results are mysterious and abstract, mixing drawing with long- exposure imagery. She cites both Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray’s experimental approach, as well as Sugimoto, Jan Groover and Barbara Kasten, as inspiration.
A series of monotone photographs of dystopian urban landscapes make up Felicity Hammond's Restore to Factory settings project, which sets out to explore the paradoxical meanings associated with the colour blue. From the colour of an error screen to a blueprint for future planning, the contradiction of blue is amplified in the sapphire-saturated urban landscapes where past and present collide and human intervention is 'reabsorbed into the landscape'. Hammond says, 'This work stands for both progression and error.'
Hannah Farrell’s meticulously composed series of still lives, Close Your Eyes and Think of England, ‘investigates the notion of self in the context of femininity’ by juxtaposing everyday items and 1970s softcore. ‘I’m interested in the surreal, the uncanny; anything that unsettles ever so slightly,’ explains Farrell.
