Turner Galleries are proud to welcome the critically acclaimed Australian photographer Anne Zahalka to Perth for a solo exhibition and residency in March 2017.
Anne Zahalka is one of Australia's most highly regarded photo-media artists, having exhibited extensively in Australia and overseas for more than thirty years. Her work has often explored cultural stereotyping and has challenged these with a humorous and critical voice. She deconstructs familiar images and re-presents them to allow other figures and stories to be told that reflect on cultural diversity, gender and difference within Australian society.
For her upcoming show at Turner Galleries Anne Zahalka will exhibit her Wild Life series, which originated in 2006 and was selected for the 2007 inaugural opening of the Samstag Museum in South Australia as a major installation of the entire suite. Most recently Wild Life has been included in the exhibition, Tricking the Eye - contemporary trompe l'oeil at Geelong Art Gallery along with artists Chris Bond, Daniel Crooks, Georgina Cue, Gregory Hodge, Jess Johnson, Jan Murray and Ricky Swallow. Works from the Wild Life series have been acquired by major private and public collections including the National Gallery of Australia and the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
A revisiting of the original series has resulted in some new iterations of these works commenting further on the impact of climate change and the carbon footprint that contemporary travel leaves. Rising Tide, 2016 was recently selected as a finalist for the theme TIDAL at Devonport Regional Gallery and is a response to the impact of global warming and rising sea levels. These new images will be also exhibited at Turner Galleries.
The images from Wild Life depict dioramas from the American Natural History Museum in New York taken over a number of years by the artist with medium format film. Following along similar lines to Hiroshi Sugimoto where the camera is placed centrally to the constructed scene it captures and records this illusionary space melding fauna, flora and painted background seamlessly into a believable scene. In Zahalka's process, the negatives are scanned and contemporary elements are introduced digitally to disrupt these preserved pristine worlds.
The Turner Galleries residency and exhibition has inspired Anne to delve further into the history of the diorama looking specifically at what remains of dioramas in Australia today. Sadly, few have survived the onslaught of contemporary museum practices but what are held are early photographic records of them. Anne has been working with the Australian Museum in Sydney, who hold a collection of glass plates and large format negatives. She has been scanning them and will develop new iterations of these digitally during her residency.
As the Western Australian Museum is currently being rebuilt, Anne is interested in photographing the 'museum in storage'. She is liaising with Museum staff to photograph the Woodward Diorama that has been preserved to consider how this habitat has changed through time. The museum has provided considerable background research to this diorama and Anne will work collaboratively with the Senior Preparator, Kirsten Tulis for this project.
Anne has been the recipient of numerous awards and commissions, winning the Macarthur Cook Art Prize (2008), the National Photographic Prize (2007) and the Leopold Godowsky Photography Award in Boston, (2005). Sydney Airport commissioned a major photographic project titled Welcome to Sydney, (2003) portraying migrants against the backdrop of Sydney's multicultural community. She was awarded another portrait commission in 2014 to mark the 25th Anniversary of Parliament House in Canberra and chose to represent the employees (not the politicians) in the building and the environments they work in.
Anne lives and works in Newtown, Sydney and has held more than 40 solo exhibitions. She has been curated into over 140 group exhibitions in Australia and internationally, including The Photograph and Australia, Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2015, Australian Vernacular Photography, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2014, Leisureland at the Australian Embassy in Washington, 2007; Three Australian Photographers: Bill Henson, Tracey Moffatt and Anne Zahalka, GEM/Fotomuseum, Den Haag, The Netherlands, 2007; Supernatural Artificial at the Chulalangkorn Art Centre, Bangkok, Thailand, 2005, and the Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, 2004; and Photographica Australis, exhibited at the Sala del Canal de Isabel II in Madrid, Spain, and travelled Asia, 2003. In 2007-08 a major retrospective, Hall of Mirrors: Anne Zahalka Portraits 1987 – 2007, was opened at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne and toured to the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Warrnambool Art Gallery, Ipswich Art Gallery and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.
Anne Zahalka is represented in numerous major national and international collections including National Gallery of Australia; National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of WA; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; Queensland Art Gallery; National Portrait Gallery; Artbank; Australian Bicentennial Collection; National Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand; Parliament House Collection; National Gallery of Victoria; Sir Elton John Collection; Deutsche Bank Collection; International Polaroid Collection, USA; Visart, New York; and numerous other regional galleries, universities and private collections in Australia and abroad.
Anne Zahalka is represented by ARC ONE Gallery
Images courtesy ARC ONE Gallery and the artist.
*prices are for unframed photographs
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at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
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