Images courtesy of Jack Towers and Michael Tartaglia
Co-ordinates: perspectives on place in contemporary WA photography
A fundraiser exhibition for Purple House charity
Curated by Karl Halliday and Henry King
Pig Melon
181 Lord St, Perth WA
28th December 2019
Featuring: Chloe Bartram, Jacobus Capone, Simon Deadman, Jane Finlay, Michael Jalaru Torres, Alex Malkovic, Rebecca Orchard, Tim Palman, Emma Pegrum, Chloe Sobejko, Paul Sutherland, Aaron Webber, Duncan Wright, Christopher Young
Exhibition Catalogue
Co-ordinates is a one-night exhibition event featuring fourteen of WA’s leading and emerging artists to consider the concept of ‘place’ in relation to photographic practice. Exploring each artist’s personal interpretation of the theme, Co-ordinates weaves together a mosaic of intimate perspectives meditating upon our relationship to place on an individual, collective and even profoundly cosmic scale.
Across the show’s diverse and inventive exercise of the camera - an instrument that has long endeavoured to re-place the real with its image - Co-ordinates engages with the photographic medium from a variety of different vantage points. In the exhibition, we see photography employed as a biographical device for mapping memory and family history; as a ritual of contemplation towards one’s connection to earth and country; as a cunning critique of the values within photography’s own landscape tradition; as an inspired celebration of the spirit and splendour of the natural world; and, perhaps above all, as a call for action pressing for ecological preservation and governmental response - concerns that, with the mounting threat posed by the climate change crisis, have never been so urgently in need of address.
To support disadvantaged communities across the country, 100% of proceeds from artwork and bar sales were donated to Purple House. Purple House is an Indigenous-run mobile health service operating in remote Aboriginal communities across WA and Australia.
We wish to acknowledge the Whadjuk people of the Noongar nation, the traditional and rightful custodians of the land where this event took place and pay respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. We wish to acknowledge that sovereignty was never been ceded and that the land where this event took place always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Special thanks to the artists, our printer Joseph Landro, Luisa and Leigh from Pig Melon, Gage Roads Brewing, Si Vintners Wine, our DJs Jack, Megan and Josh, and our photographers Liam, Jack and Michael. Without the generosity of their support and service, this exhibition would not have been possible.
