The Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) presents the GradFoto 2021 online exhibition, showcasing twenty finalists of the GradFoto 2021 award. The annual award celebrates the artistic excellence of graduating students and is open to emerging contemporary artists from selected Australian institutions whose artistic practice includes photography.
Now in its second year, GradFoto 2021 continues to showcase the high calibre of photographic work by recent graduates from Charles Darwin University, Charles Sturt University, Deakin University, Edith Cowan University, Federation University Australia, LCI Melbourne, Monash University, Murdoch University, National Art School, Oxygen College, Photography Studies College, RMIT University, Swinburne University of Technology, TAFE New South Wales, University of New South Wales, University of Tasmania, University of Wollongong, VCA University of Melbourne, and Whitehouse Institute of Design.
The 2022 judging panel included Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Director of Programs, Carriageworks Alasdair Foster, Writer, Researcher & Curator Sunyoung Kim, Curator, Museum of Photography Seoul Talia Linz, Curator, Artspace Sydney Pippa Milne, Senior Curator, Monash Gallery of Art Talia Smith, Artist & Curator, Granville Centre Art Gallery Madé Spencer-Castle, Independent Curator Fiona Sweet, Artistic Director & CEO, BIFB 2016-2021 David Wadelton, Artist.
Meg De Young, The Conversations We Have, 2021
Congratulations, Meg De Young from RMIT University, winner of the $500 prize for their series The Conversations We Have. The judges said,
“There’s something wonderfully deadpan about this serious yet tender series of performed images by Meg De Young. The images are playful but also have a sense of underlying tension. There is a mixture of tenderness and distance, mimicry and truth, highlighting the complexity of the mother/daughter relationship. The images are absurdly compelling, and the theory behind them is dark and tempting.”
The judges comments on select finalists’ works:
Teva Cosic’s Puno Puno, Lacu Noć, 2021, extends from the artist’s desire to reconnect to her Croatian heritage after the death of my grandmother in 2020 – “This series is a thoughtful exploration of migration, familial histories and the way that we attempt to connect.”
“The images are beautiful and searching, trying to make sense of the many threads of our own histories.”
Teva Cosic’s Puno Puno, Lacu Noć, 2021
Finn Goldstraw’s series of images are all products of experimentation and development – “Finn Goldstraw’s series demonstrates that contemporary experimental works often abolish and, at the same time, sustain the traditional term of photographic medium… it is excellent to see experimentation with the medium in such a constrained yet imaginative way. Finn was able to surpass a merely technical effect and create a sense of story and pathos.”
Daniel Longo’s SCENES OF CASTRATIONS & GAZES UPON CONTROL, 2021, seeks to represent the abject in material forms using fragmented forms of the body –”The handling of the figuration as bodies melt and combine is achieved persuasively, while the aesthetic and mood are established and maintained with visceral conviction.”
Sevim Dogan Ozkan, My Mother Tells Me, 2021-, is an ongoing project that aims to explore the connection between past and present by engaging with notions of childhood, identity and memory – “The migrant negotiates a displacement that cannot be fully felt or understood by later generations. It is inside them – a personal memory of something other. In this deceptively simple series of annotated photographs, a mother reflects upon this gulf. Each image is a reconstruction of something lost; each comment is an echo fading even as it returns. What is so effective is the way the artist uses the voice of her daughter to throw her own experience into perspective – at once animating memory and presaging its forgetting.”
Finalists include Meg De Young, Ali Choudhry, Teva Cosic, Mikayla De Pasquale, Sevim Dogan Ozkan, Jane Fitzgerald, Finn Goldstraw, Brittany Hefren, Panayiotis Kasseris, Richard Langley, Denise Lawry, Celeste Lloyd, Daniel Longo, Meredith Marshallsea, Jack McLain, Panisa Ongwat, Ruiqi Qiu, Masoumeh Sadeghi, Sophie Smith, and Tatiana Yakou.
One finalist will be awarded a $200 cash prize for the People’s Choice Award, as voted by the public throughout the GradFoto 2021 exhibition. Online voting closes on 20 March 2022.
Explore the GradFoto 2021 online exhibition here: ballaratfoto.org/gradfoto-2021-exhibition/
