Emma Phillips (AU)

Send Me a Lullaby

Image: Emma Phillips, from the series [Send Me a Lullaby], 2021. Image courtesy ReadingRoom.

Image: Emma Phillips, from the series Send Me a Lullaby, 2021. Image courtesy ReadingRoom.

Send Me a Lullaby is a love letter to a city undergoing immense change, created during a period of both urban transformation and global upheaval. Emma Phillips was commissioned by Photo Australia to make a photographic portrait of Melbourne in the lead up to PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. The resulting project—published as the first book by PHOTO Editions and launching at PHOTO 2021—is a reflection on connection, navigation and time, and the constantly evolving relationship between people and place.

Phillips’ photographs contemplate urban, domestic and psychological space. Weaving into this series are portraits of people Phillips has come across in Melbourne, capturing a living, breathing city as it responds to the fallout of bushfires and a pandemic. These disparate photographs taken across different seasons construct a dialogue between some of the city’s component parts—homes, shops, parks, streets—with archaeological objects from beneath the city, offering myriad stories to uncover and tell.

Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021

PHOTO Editions is a series co-published by Photo Australia and Perimeter Editions

Send Me a Lullaby is supported by Hillvale

Artists

PHOTO Channel

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