Mohamed Bourouissa (FR)

Periphériques/Shoplifters

29 April 2022 - 22 May 2022
Image: Mohamed Bourouissa, [La Fenêtre], 2005, from the series [Périphérique]. Courtesy the artist.

Image: Mohamed Bourouissa, La Fenêtre, 2005, from the series Périphérique. Courtesy the artist.

When

29 April 2022 - 22 May 2022

Venue

Peter O'Callaghan QC Gallery [i]
Owen Dixon Chambers East
205 William St, Melbourne
Mon – Fri, 8.30am – 5.30pm

Theme

Society

Accessibility

Wheelchair access

Price

Free

In this exhibition, two series from Deutsche Börse Prize winner Mohamed Bourouissa, each exploring society’s overlooked fringes, sit within the Victorian Bar’s collection of portraits of legal dignitaries.

For Périphérique, Bourouissa’s breakthrough series of photographs, the artist appropriates codes of art historical painting, staging scenes with friends and acquaintances in the banlieue, the working-class suburbs encircling Paris (and site of riots in 2005). Confrontations, gatherings, looks, and frozen gestures all suggest a dramatic tension. Invoking French Romantic painter Delacroix and contemporary artists such as Jeff Wall, Bourouissa gives a place in French history to marginalised communities.

Shoplifters is a series of photographs of photographs. In a supermarket in Brooklyn, Bourouissa was drawn to a Polaroid display behind the counter of shoplifters. Each was photographed holding the item they had been stealing—everyday items like fruit, eggs, cleaning products. Bourouissa has rephotographed and recontextualised these images, revealing them as documents of people caught in poverty.

Curated by Photo Australia

Supported by JCP Studios and Fini Frames

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Artists

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