MEXICO: Obscure rituals that blend the contemporary with the timeless, the personal with the collective, to suggest imaginary states and real-world paradoxes.
Conceptual
REPUBLIC OF KOREA: Creating a fluid and ambiguous aesthetic space between painting, sculpture and photography, Hyunmi Yoo challenges our understanding of the relationship between visual representation, ‘truth’ and ‘reality’.
REPUBLIC OF KOREA: Exploring the liminal space at the threshold of realty and simulation, original and replica, fact and fake.
PERU: Art and Nature entangle the body in images that speak of the camouflage adopted by an outsider.
MALAYSIA / SINGAPORE: Apparently whimsical images that critique community erasure in Malaysia and the re-wilding of a hyperreal city-state in lockdown.
GERMANY: Reworking the traditional contact sheet on a grand scale, Thomas Kellner makes architecture dance.
FRANCE: For Denis Darzacq, the body is an instrument of social critique with which to explore the constraints and barriers suffered by people marginalised by materialist society.
COLOMBIA: In addressing the trauma resulting from the ongoing multilateral armed conflict in her country, Erika Diettes focuses not on violence but on bearing witness to the grief of survivors.
REPUBLIC OF KOREA: Constructing from the catalogue of British oil painting ironic self-portraits that situate the alienated Asian man in the midst of Britain’s aristocratic past.
MEXICO: conceptual and performative images that capture the physical nature and metaphysical possibility of deserts around the world.
AUSTRALIA: Photographic tableaux that bring new life to the artefacts of historical and natural-history museums nationally and internationally.
FRANCE: As the old civilisation collapses generating crisis, illusion and corruption, the paradox of the real echoes through the imaginative lens of memory.
GHANA: With few resources and no connections into the wider art-world, Nana Frimpong Oduro has developed a distinctive photo-art practice gaining recognition internationally.
AUSTRALIA: a remarkable synthesis of timeless Aboriginal wisdom and radically innovative printmaking that creates pictures of intense poetic beauty.
BRAZIL: Spectacular images that extend the concepts of time, space and perspective to explore the complex and multifarious nature of our contemporary world.
REPUBLIC OF KOREA: Bohnchang Koo finds in the simplest of objects and surfaces a nuanced expression of traditional Korean values of humility, practicality and acceptance of the imperfect nature of being.
INTERNATIONAL: Impressions of Christmas and the New Year through the kaleidoscopic lens of artists from Asia, the Americas, Europe and Oceania.
UNITED KINGDOM: A forensic examination of plants, zoological specimens, snail trails or nylon stockings that finds poetry in precision and unexpected grandeur in the mundane.
LATIN AMERICA: Three Latino artists of Japanese heritage spend a month photographing in the Land of the Rising Sun. What will their images tell us about their identity?
LATINOAMÉRICA: Tres artistas latinoamericanos de origen japonés pasan un mes fotografiando la Tierra del Sol Naciente. ¿Qué nos dirán sus imágenes acerca de su identidad?
UNITED KINGDOM: Throwing the paradoxes of the domestic environment into sharp relief, Sian Bonnell uses absurdity to critique the socially constructed role of women in the home.
USA: Employing the symbolic and physical qualities of water, Wendy Sacks makes photographs that speak of the complex nature of human relationships, both light and dark.
ARGENTINA: A nocturnal explorer who seeks to communicate the richness of everyday lives and the profound histories of ordinary people.
AUSTRALIA: With a subtle insistence, Marian Drew’s still-life and light-painting images question how we might inhabit and share the natural world in a sustainable and equitable way.
SWITZERLAND: Playing with the nature of visual perception, Dominique Teufen discovers the creative possibilities of the photocopier, photoflash, glossy photographic paper and grey paint.
AUSTRALIA: Rather than illustrating an idea, Christophe Canato’s images propose a paradox that animates questions around gender, sexuality and the transition from child to adult.
BELGIUM: Visual poetry, nature photography and digital design come together in Catherine Nelson’s transcendent landscapes to evoke the complexity of ecological equilibrium.
MEXICO: Dulce Pinzón creates latter-day visual fables that address real social issues: racial prejudice, low-paid workers, environmental damage.
VENEZUELA: Images evoking the powerful mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the southern Americas that emphasise the interdependence of humankind and Nature.
USA: Ellen Jantzen uses digital imaging processes to synthesise a visual language through which to evoke the existential conundrums of our place in Nature and the impermanence of life.
CANADA: Combining humour with cultural critique; history with psychology, Diana Thorneycroft constructs visual stories of the anxiety and contradiction embedded in the dark subsoil of Canadian national mythology.
ARGENTINA: An artist and inventor who builds cameras to capture both space and time: from brooding art deco architecture to mind-bending aerial imagery and the world’s longest continuous photographic negative.
AUSTRALIA: David Stephenson’s photographs are about very big ideas: the endless Antarctic icecap; the vastness of the heavens; the great domes of European architecture, and the luminous excesses of the modern metropolis.
GUATEMALA: Luis González Palma’s grew up during thirty years of civil war, but while his images evoke sadness, they neither sentimentalise nor do they counsel despair. Rather they affirm the transcendent nature of the human spirit.
AUSTRALIA: Photography, digital montage and embroidery combine in images that draw the viewer into the often-disquieting aesthetic of dreams.
UNITED KINGDOM: Quintessentially British in their rigorous formality, these allegorical tableaux grow from the personal experience of an intergenerational life partnership condemned to the margins of ‘otherness’.
INDIA: Described as “the most entertaining artist-iconoclast of contemporary Indian art”, Pushpamala N’s pioneering and influential feminist–conceptual photographic performance works seek to subvert the dominant cultural and intellectual discourse in India.
USA: Repurposing their household possession to create a mandala or build a spaceship, Stephan Hillerbrand and Mary Magsamen use photography, video, performance and installation to explore the paradoxes of the American Dream.
UNITED KINGDOM: A festival that celebrates its sense of place and community while engaging the leading edge of technological possibility and international innovation.
AUSTRALIA: the stark reality of global warming given particular poignancy by an artist who identifies with the melting icebergs.
UNITED KINGDOM: An exploration of Scotland’s cultural and historical figures through an innovative hybrid of photography, painting, sculpture and installation.
URUGUAY: An artist, chemist, craftsman, essayist, poet, and teacher, who imbues photography with a newfound physical and philosophical dimension.
