It was a delight to have a conversation with Dr Pia Johnson about photography, community and connection with the world we live in. The conversation wove together discussions on cameraless photography, connecting to all things living and non living, and negotiating the mum/artist life and all its chaotic, messy and fragmented qualities. Listen to the podcast series here.
After Walter Hopps Closing Party
‘This exhibition is inspired by Walter Hopps' 36 Hours project held at MOTA (Museum of Temporary Art), Washington, USA in 1978. A renowned non-conformist, maverick curator, and transcender of boundaries, Walter Hopps devised this seminal project as an invitation for any artist to take their work to the gallery without any chance of rejection or censorship.
After Walter Hopps aims at removing the restrictions enforced in an institutional gallery setting – opening it up for civic reclamation through showcasing the works of all who dare to call themselves an artist, irrespective of profile or reputation’
More info can be found on the gallery website: https://platformarts.org.au/events/after-walter-hopps-2024
FRI 20 SEP FROM 5.30PM
CLOSING PARTY & FINAL SALES
MAPh Workshop
A sneak peek of a new body of work exploring the impressions of plants that live in another space. This series uses a combination of AI image-making and the cyanotype process, and I am so excited to be able to share this way of working at an upcoming workshop at MAPh.
Saturday 10 February, 1pm to 4pm
Bring your own phone/laptop/tablet
$41 MAPh members/$45 non-members
More about the workshop...
We will use AI image generators as a tool for image-making through text entered as prompts into AI software. You'll take the resulting images to make an acetate negative, which in turn will be used to create a physical image in the form of a cyanotype.
Not only will there be interesting conversations on the possibilities and properties of camera-less processes that actively shift between digital and analogue image-making, as well as the social and ethical implications of creating images with AI, but it will be a FUN afternoon of making and just being creative.
Hope to see you there! Head to https://maph.org.au/events/893/
Stargazing at the Museum of Australian Photography
Pinhead Mercury, 2014.
I have works from the Celestial Body Model series included in the group exhibition Stargazing at the Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh).
Curated by Stella Loftus-Hills, Stargazing brings together a selection of contemporary photographs that guide us towards the stars, the planets and celestial spaces in poetic, experimental, playful, conceptual, and often quite abstract ways. Works by Amos Gebhardt, Michaela Gleave, Anna Higgins, Harry Nankin, Trent Parke, Luke Parker, Patrick Pound, Michael Riley, Kate Robertson, David Stephenson, Christian Thompson, Zan Wimberley and Jemima Wyman.
When: 25 Nov 2023 - 18 Feb 2024
Prompted Peculiar at BIFB
Currently on exhibition as part of the exhibition Prompted Peculiar, Leaf Chain is a new work that playfully explores the possibilities of an AI photogram. https://ballaratfoto.org
Site Specific, published by Tall Poppy Press
Thrilled to be included in the book Site Specific, published by Tall Poppy Press. More info on the book here.
Artist Talk - Saturday 8 May 2021, NorthSite Contemporary Arts
KUNA SIUWAI POKING Medicinal Plants from Siwai - Exhibition Invite
Exhibition Invitation below
From All Points of the Southern Sky: Photography From Australia and Oceania / Exhibition now online
A 360 Virtual Tour and narrated Gallery Walk-Thru now available to view for the exhibition ‘From All Points of the Southern Sky: Photography From Australia and Oceania,’ Southeast Museum of Photography, America.
To view go to https://www.smponline.org/from-all-points-video-links
Chronicling community: ethics, embodiment and connectedness in photography - Dissertation available for viewing
My PhD dissertation is now available as an open-access document. To view click here.
Description
This practice-led doctoral project focuses on a micro-community setting at Kainake Village, located in the Siwai region of Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. Through cameraless photographic techniques, the project chronicles traditional medicinal plants as a core value of the Siwai people for cultural preservation. The project acknowledges that misaligned visual representations of community and their relationships to the environment can lead to an erasure of localised contexts, intergenerational fracturing and a sense of disempowerment within the community. Theory reveals that colonial characteristics of extraction, exploitation or an exacerbation of the 'other' is evident in photographic history, particularly by Western photographers who work in Indigenous contexts. The aim of this research is to critique these problematic approaches so that points of departure may be found for the empowered and harmonious photographic chronicling of community. The objective of this project is to investigate how photographic processes can embody a community's social and cultural values. The research seeks to find methods of aligning to the photographic chronicling of community with a more ethical strategy and of conveying a sense of embodiment and connectedness. It reveals that if a photographic practitioner aligns and adheres to the community and land contexts within which they are working-during, within and after a project-a decolonised approach to image making and dissemination will unfold and be nurtured.
From all points of the Southern Sky / Southeast Museum of Photography
Curated by Ashley Lumb
September 22 - December 16, 2020
Torika Bolatagici, Jane Brown, Peta Clancy, Stephen Dupont, Silvi Glattauer, Leah King Smith, Katrin Koenning, Sonia Payes, Kate Robertson, Kurt Sorensen, Angela Tiatia, Tobias Titz, Anne Zahalka.
Water works, Bakehouse Project for Center for Contemporary Photography
I5 - 19 November 2019
Last days to see my Bakehouse Project: CCP takeover on Punt Road, Melbourne. The takeover coincides with the Experimental Cameraless Photography workshop I am running at the Centre for Contemporary Photography on Saturday 23 November, some spots still available.
Image credit : Christine McFetridge
KAGALALO at PNG Human Rights Film Festival
Kagalalo, 2019, 5.07 minutes.
KAGALALO is showing as part of the United Nation's Human Rights Film Festival in Papua New Guinea in September and October 2019. It will be shown in Madang (Divine Word University), Lae (UNITECH), Goroka (UOG) and Port Moresby (POM Arts Theatre).
I was invited to make this film in alignment to Melanesian ways whereby husband, wife, family and community work together for a common purpose. The film was unscripted and the three questions were decided upon after some time in the community. In this approach, the film becomes a conduit for the local people to connect on their terms to a global audience.
FILM SYNOPSIS: In February 2019, The Kainake Project, a grassroots sustainable development organisation located in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, travelled to South Bougainville. They asked the community at Kagalalo Conservation Area three questions relating to their aspirations and struggles with their locally run conservation project. Kagalalo in the local Telei language translates to ‘you get up, you work, and you’ll get it.’
The film aims to provide a platform for local voices to be heard by the global community. It reveals the need for a Melanesian approach to conservation, whereby community development must be integrated to empower and provide wanted benefits to the local people. The Kagalalo conservation project was initiated with the financial support of the Australian Museum and the Segre Foundation. While these organisations funded the project, they relinquished any form of control and allowed the community to direct their conservation efforts in ways that addressed community needs. Therefore, Kagalalo is about the community’s human rights to have a voice on how they want to see conservation work in their community context. It also highlights the need for integrating development with community-driven natural resources management. The human-rights to have a voice and make sound environmental decisions are becoming increasingly critical given the impending Climate Change challenges which are already displacing populations in parts of Bougainville.
Centre for Contemporary Photography Workshops
Delighted to be running two workshops at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia.
In the one-day workshop participants will engage with analogue and digital alternative photographic processes, combining Lumen printing and Scanography. You will be encouraged to embrace the experimental and unpredictable nature of these cameraless processes. Discover how errors can be transformed into new possibilities.
2019 dates:
Saturday 5 October
Saturday 23 November
For more information: https://ccp.org.au/education/workshops/on-experimental-cameraless-photography-with-kate-robertson
Solo Exhibition / Jarvis Dooney Galerie for the European Month of Photography
Honoured to be presenting the photographic series Recording the medicinal plants of Siwai, Bougainville and launching the accompanying book Kuna Siuwai Pokong at Jarvis Dooney Galerie for the European Month of Photography (EMOP).
26 September - 17 November 2018
Please join Chief Jeffrey Noro, Rura Clan, and I at the opening 6 - 8 pm Friday 28 September for the exhibition, book launch and talk.
In 2012, Chief Alex Dawia, Taa Lupumoiku Clan from the Siwai region of Bougainville invited Kate to chronicle medicinal plants in his region. His purpose was twofold; a positive recognition of Bougainville and preservation of cultural values, through exhibition and a book. In 2013, Dr Jeffrey Noro, founder and executive director of The Kainake Project (TKP), joined the medicinal plant project. The project has been guided by TKP, a grass roots organisation in Bougainville that focuses on the need for environmental conservation to be undertaken with community development for empowerment and sustainability.
The project acknowledges the communities’ desire for equilibrium between traditional and new knowledge systems, to allow both to thrive in an increasingly global society. The artwork considers new photographic modes for sensitively engaging with deep and living histories by aligning analogue and digital characteristics found within the image to knowledge and communication systems.
The exhibition for EMOP includes photographic prints, an embroidered fabric panel and the second book launch of Kuna Siuwai Pokong. The first book launch was held at Kainake Village (where the images were made) on 19 September. It coincided with the opening of a community resource centre and a week-long sports tournament.
The book is published by TKP with financial support from the UNDP through their UNDP-GEF Small Grants Program.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body. The City of Boroondara has also provided support through their Individual Achievement Grant.
Utopian Tongues / Seventh Gallery
30 August- 21 September, 2018
Opening Night: Wednesday August 29, 6-8pm
Alicia King, Ara Dolatian, Callan, Farnaz Dadfar, Kate Robertson, Jake Treacy, Manisha Anjali, Marko Radosavljevic, Siying Zhou, Talia Smith, Tané Andrews, Walter Bakowski and Yuria Okamura, curated by Jake Treacy.
Utopian Tongues is a project that brings together an inclusive group of contemporary creatives through challenging and altruistic visions of tomorrow. Through practices of art, poetry, music, dance and architecture a set of utopian acts are performed within and beyond the gallery space.
Utopian Tongues transforms SEVENTH into a space for critical thinking and progressive discourse during the exhibition, questioning how we might ensure a better and more engaged future. Identity, culture, sexuality and spirituality inform these conversations of tomorrow through the agency of today, realising art as a conduit for potent change, transformation and healing. By amplifying and providing platform for these disparate yet powerful voices, the exhibition speaks of unity in diversity, interconnectivity and community; it invokes a space for reflection, yet also of action.
Jake Treacy is a curator, writer and poet whose practice employs esoteric acts through exhibition-making, performativity, and the spoken and written word. His recent thesis examines ways of constructing liminal experiences in order to incur healing, promoting inclusivity and community, and exercising the therapy of art.
Darkroom Dinner Auction / Monash Gallery of Art
I have donated an artwork for the Monash Gallery of Art Darkroom Dinner Auction, for more info...
Women In The Whitehorse Art Collection / Whitehorse Artspace
Included in the group exhibition 'Women In The Whitehorse Art Collection' at Whitehorse Artspace, Melbourne. Exhibition dates 08 March - 28 April 2018.
Cosmic Walk #1, 2013, unique print
NUCLEUS, imagining science / Noorderlicht Photofestival, Netherlands
Excited to be included in NUCLEUS, imagining science, Noorderlicht International Photofestival 2017.
On this 24th Noorderlicht International Photofestival science is a subject as well as a source of inspiration. The human urge to understand and control the world has already led to an unprecedented amount of knowledge given the relatively short time we have been roaming this planet. The achievements of scientific thought have permeated everyone’s lives. This process, which is now already being called the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, will only intensify in the coming years. Artists often ask themselves the same questions as scientists and share many of the same principles like originality, creativity and an open mind. In NUCLEUS the two disciplines will enter into a dialogue with one another.
Finalist / 2017 Bowness Prize
Excited to be a finalist for the Monash Gallery of Art 2017 Bowness Prize. To see the complete list of finalists click here.
PAAH (ma ipa’amo newarei koring - use after walking on faeces), 2016.