Ben Cauchi (NZ)

Digital tools are constantly innovated in a quest to mimic the effect of traditional photographic techniques. Meanwhile, printed photography is becoming more and more of an anomaly. Cauchi’s work is uniquely positioned in this chronology of obsolescence and retrospection, simultaneously recalling photography’s earliest concerns and materials while experimenting with contemporary subject matter and technical adaptations. His works rethink photography’s reproducible nature, turning the oft-forgotten negative into a unique-state positive. His practice has always been occupied with layers, from the semi-covert veiling of elements recalling photography’s spiritualist origins, to the opening up of the scene to reveal the studio and props behind, to the strata within the glass plate itself. In the artist’s hands the photograph moves beyond an impression of chemicals and light, becoming a physical object. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Shadow catchers, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2020,The unseen masterpiece, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, 2020, Eidolas, Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney, 2019, Fundamentals, Black Box Projects, London, 2019, Painting with Light, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, 2019, Jacob’s Ladder, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh 2018, Runes: Photography and Decipherment, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 2018 and As above, so below, Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, 2017. In 2012 he undertook a Creative New Zealand Berlin Visual Artists Residency with Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin where he currently lives and works. His work is held in many public collections in New Zealand and Australia.