Images: James Bugg, Sarah Pannell, Anu Kumar.
GALLERY ONE | James Bugg, Gracie Edwards, Anu Kumar, Sarah Pannell, Emma Phillips, Georgia Smedley, Sarah Walker.
ON HOLY WATER
SAT 15 JUL 4.00PM - FRI 11 AUG 5.00PM
OPENING EVENT SAT 15 JUL, 4.00-6.00PM
FREE TO ATTEND
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Monday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Tuesday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Wednesday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Thursday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Friday 9.00am - 5.00pm
Saturday closed
Sunday closed
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Platform Arts is wheelchair-accessible via our Gheringhap St entrance. Unlocked, accessible bathrooms are available on both ground and first floors.
For accessibility enquiries, please directly contact us at hello@platformarts.org.au
Please note, Platform Arts is a dry venue.
“Water is important to people who do not have it, and the same is true of control.” - Joan Didion
Even when we don’t think of it, water is ever present and endlessly in motion. Water works without seeking praise or worship, but through channels such a religion, nature, and experience, we cannot help but yield to its power. Water will cool us in the summer heat, cleanse us; holds us hostage to its whim, warming and nurturing us. It keeps us alive. As Didion draws parallels between the connection humankind has to water with our relenting need for control, she presents an alternative view of the element that encircles all of our lives. At any time this element can turn on us; a rough wave, a burst pipe, a flood, and Didion observes that we cannot ultimately control it.
On Holy Water is a exhibition responding to the essay by Joan Didion (Holy Water) and takes a look into the contributing artists’ individual relationships with this element. It invites contemplation and reevaluation on our collective link to water, and takes a deeper look into what our own stories may tell us.
The artists in this exhibition acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. They pay their respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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James Bugg @jamesbugg / www.jamesbuggphoto.com
James Bugg is a documentary photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. Bugg is interested in visual storytelling revolving around the ideas of people, place and circumstance. Having completed a Bachelor of Photography at Photography Studies College Melbourne in 2017, Bugg has gone on to win The Moran Contemporary Photography Prize becoming the youngest recipient in the prize’s history. Bugg is a current member of Australian photography collective Oculi and his work has been featured in a vast array of Australian and International publications.
Gracie Edwards @_greysea
Gracie Edwards is an Australian visual artist based in Melbourne whose practice stretches across painting and photography. Edwards graduated from RMIT University in 2017 with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Distinction).
Inspired by the unconventional beauty of the banal, Edwards’ art explores the relationships between various elements such as colour, line, shape, form, composition, layering, texture, material and placement.
Edwards’ abstract painting practice investigates visual elements, such as using bold expressionist colour and geometry as compositional strategies while her photographic practice investigates the same themes with an emphasis on the subtle and subdued urban street imagery.
Predominantly working with oils, spray paint and 35mm film photography, Edwards studies the languages and translations of abstraction and uses her methodologies as a platform to start a dialogue between the conception of chance and intention within her work.
Anu Kumar @kumar_anu / anukumar.com.au
Anu Kumar is a photographic artist living and working in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia).
Working primarily with medium format photography, Anu interrogates themes of displacement and the diaspora; using her practice as a gateway to understanding her identity as a woman born in India and raised in Australia. Through her work, Anu strives to archive the quotidian expressions of everyday life as an examination of self, family and belonging.
Her photography has been published in the New York Times and Vogue Italia and is soon to be Exhibited at Hillvale Gallery (2021) and the Centre for Contemporary Photography (2022). Anu recently published her monograph Ghar with Perimeter Editions (2022).
Sarah Pannell @sarahpannell / www.sarahpannell.com
Sarah Pannell is a Melbourne based documentary photographer whose work concerns culture, landscape and community both in Australia and abroad. Sarah’s studies as an undergraduate in International Studies focussed on 20th century Middle Eastern politics and history which in turn, has lead to her interest in the region, most recently in Iran. Curiosity spurs Pannell to travel as often as she can to where she can observe and explore shifting cultures and changing spaces. This fascination with humans’ ever-evolving dance with their surrounding environments has led to an array of projects focussing on everyday life, preservation of traditions and communities around the world. Sarah’s soft and human gaze aims to diffuse and enrich perspectives of cultures and societies that are often overwhelmingly shrouded in negativity by outside eyes. Sarah has produced a number of publications including Tabriz to Shiraz (2019) published by Perimeter Editions and Hillvale, self-published titles including Sehir (2014) and The Territories (2015). Sarah lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, on the un-ceded traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people. Sarah is a proud member of Women Photograph.
Emma Phillips @3mmaphillip5
Emma Phillips is a photographer based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work, set around the focal point of the home, probes ideals of domesticity, womanhood, memory, and dreams. Recent activities include a major book commission from Photo Australia and Perimeter Books, nomination for the Murray Art Museum Albury National Photography Prize, acquisition from the Art Gallery of New South Wales and a solo exhibition at ReadingRoom in 2019. From 2014-2019 Emma was the photobook buyer at Perimeter Books, where she implemented the Perimeter Talks program. Emma is an occasional writer and educator, contributing to programs at University of Technology, Sydney, Photography Studies College, Melbourne and Penumbra Foundation, New York City. Emma graduated with an MFA from the University of Hartford’s International Limited Residency program in 2017.
Georgia Smedley @georgiasmedley
Georgia Smedley is a Naarm born photographer, living and working on stolen land. Their work focuses on portraiture and imagery that is both melancholy and maternal in equal measure, lending light to privacy. Their work aims to invite, to connect and to confront.
Sarah Walker @sarahjwalker__ / www.sarahjadewalker.com
Sarah Walker is a photo-based artist living in Naarm on unceded sovereign lands of the Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. Her practice centres around the psychology of myth, with a keen interest in the way people regulate their mental state in relation to their belief systems, and how this manifests itself into contemporary society. Sarah completed her Bachelor of Photography (Fine Art) in 2016 at Photography Studies College in Melbourne. Walker utilises combination of found and archival imagery, as well as video and sound, as a part of her photographic practice. Walker’s work has been featured in various online publications including American Suburb X, A New Nothing, Paper Journal, PH Museum, Der Greif Guest-Room, and The Heavy Collective. She has partaken in several exhibitions such as Second Sight, c3 art space (2018); A place you know, Junior Space, Melbourne (2017); Always-Already, Besser Gallery, Melbourne (2016). Walker had her first large scale solo show at Nishi Gallery, Canberra in late 2018. She won Australian and New Zealand Photobook of the Year award (2018) for her first photobook Second Sight published by Perimeter Editions, and published a second book Perimeter in 2019 called Pelči Manor.
