PHOTO 2024
Image of a large eye with a smaller box at the top of the image showing Aaron Christopher Rees

Spaced Apart with Aaron Christopher Rees

9.6.20

Aaron Christopher Rees spoke with PHOTO 2021's Artistic Director on 2 June 2020 about the ubiquity of the screen in our lives and his practice of film, live performance and photography. The presentation is part of Spaced Apart – an online design, art, photography and sound symposium that brings us closer together while we are spaced apart, exploring the oscillating forces of isolation and connectedness in relation to creative practice.

Aaron Christopher Rees’ practice explores the mobilisation of vision through the internalisation of the camera and the ubiquity of the screen. Generating work through process based photographic and structuralist video techniques of making. Rees graduated from the VCA in 2015 with honours and has been the recipient of a number of prizes, amongst them the VCA Emerging Artist prize, The Blair Trethowan TCB Art Inc Award and the Orloff Family Charitable Trust award.

Rees has exhibited internationally and interstate – recent exhibitions include: Vanishing Point, Incinerator Gallery; Tenome ‘Eyes of the hand’, First Draft (NSW); Conditional Surplus, Channels Video Art Festival at Federation Square; Speculative Foundations, Sutton Gallery Project Space; Impressions of Mars, Visual Bulk (TAS); Transference, Bus Projects; The Bathhouse Show, Space Space Gallery (JPN); Is/Is not, West Space; 1/60; 5/5.0, TCB; In the Epoc of the Near and Far, Grey Gardens Projects.

Rees will be exhibiting at CAVES gallery as part of PHOTO 2021.

Spaced Apart speaks to the importance of maintaining social connection and solidarity in the face of crises, and the importance of continuing culture and supporting the creative arts. The symposium brings together a series of live presentations from 18 speakers, providing audiences with cultural and social stimulation in a time of global lockdown. In reflecting on their work, presenters are invited to contemplate themes of solitude and togetherness, loneliness and sociability, and how these states of being might inform the process of creation. The online platform aims to provide an accessible, interactive space for sharing ideas; a space to realise new modes of digital and remote creative collaboration and exchange – one that will have ongoing relevance beyond the current pandemic.

Spaced Apart is an initiative by Melbourne creative practice U-P and co-curated by RMIT Design Hub Gallery, PHOTO 2021, Denise Neri (Aesop), Keinton Butler (Powerhouse Museum) and Molonglo. Sponsored by Sonos.

Spaced Apart takes place from 21 May to 30 June 2020. Visit spaced-apart.com to view full program and to watch talks live.

Founding Partners
  • Bowness Family Foundation
  • Naomi Milgrom Foundation
Major Government Partners
  • City of Melbourne Arts Grants Program
  • Creative Victoria
Major Partners
  • Maddocks

PHOTO Australia respectfully acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands upon which we work and live, and the rich and diverse Indigenous cultures across what is now called Australia. For over 60,000 years, Indigenous arts and culture have thrived on this sacred land, and we honour Elders and cultural leaders past and present. This was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

01–24 March