Stills Gallery specializes in visual artists working with the photographic medium, with a particular emphasis on Australian photography. The gallery supports both emerging and established artists and is happy to present a solo exhibition by Adelaide-based Magnum photographer Trent Parke including key works from his latest series THE CAMERA IS GOD (STREET PORTRAIT SERIES), which premiered in 2014 in Dark Heart, the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.
On the cusp between portraiture and abstraction, this work represents an exciting departure in Parke’s oeuvre. Expanding our expectations of both portraiture and street photography, the anonymous images of people on street corners hum with an unprecedented sense of human spirit. The subjects emerge from the film’s grain, as if distilled to their very essence. From a distance these street portraits appear to be recognizable, only to evaporate into abstraction on closer viewing.
Trent Parke’s four individually titled photo books To the Sea, which comprised the winning works of the Prudential Eye Award for Photography 2014, is also exhibited at Paris Photo. Whilst he works within the language of documentary photography, Parke sees himself as a storyteller. Bringing narrative, mystery and illusion to the recorded moment, the books journey away from city streets into empty landscapes and small towns, interweaving images into dark and mysterious streams of consciousness. Trent Parke, born in 1971 in Newcastle (Australia), lives and works in Sydney.
Stills Gallery, Stand: D1 - Directors: Kathy Freedman, Bronwyn Rennex, Founded in: 1991 . stillsgallery.com.au
