PHOTO LIVE with Guy Grabowsky and Kiron Robinson

22.9.20

On Monday 21 September 202-, Australian artists Guy Grabowsky and Kiron Robinson discussed the post-indexical nature of photography, and how it can no longer be considered as a tool to document reality. Guy's exhibition Symbionts will be presented at STATION from 12 September to 10 October 2020 as part of PHOTO 2021’s expanded program. Look out for a new exhibition curated by Kiron at Sarah Scout Presents as part of PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography in February.

GUY GRABOWSKY

Guy Grabowsky is a Melbourne-based artist and photographer working with analogue photography. Grabowsky’s interest lies in the photographic medium—all aspects of its evolvement, its role in our shifting realities, how it ‘looks’ at us and how we perceive its usefulness. Grabowsky creates photographs with and without the camera, using unconventional and traditional analogue/digital techniques. Negatives are treated as found objects; the original narrative behind the moment of capture becomes irrelevant. Through intervention and grouping, each image is provided with a new narrative and conceptual framework. The work often tests Grabowsky’s perception of an unstable reality often present in the ubiquitous image. In Grabowsky’s images this ambiguous response continually evolves—the hand is present, causing destruction to reveal a new authenticity, a new Image. The emphasis is placed upon the photograph’s textural surface and the underlying resonances it points to. Here each photograph embodies two components: the image itself, plus the reflection, or thinking about the photographic medium.

KIRON ROBINSON

Kiron Robinson is an artist who lives and works out of Melbourne. He loves photographs but does not trust them. He uses a number of photographic strategies in different mediums to interrogate the image. His work circulates around a set of ideas that he recognises in the photograph – belief and doubt in the ability to believe except through doubting. Since 2003 Robinson has exhibited his work widely both nationally and internationally. He has held recent solo exhibitions at Sarah Scout Presents and the Centre for Contemporary Photography. He has curated a number of exhibitions questioning the current photographic condition including at West Space and Benalla Art Gallery. His work is held in a number of public and private collections.

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