GradFoto 2022 Gallery

Award Winner – Samantha Poling

Home Beautiful, 2022

The GradFoto 2022 prize of $1000 is awarded to graduate Samantha Poling from Photography Studies College for their series Home Beautiful.

Jeff Moorfoot said, “The judges considered a whole range of criteria in selecting the winner of GradFoto 2022, based not only on aesthetic and technical aspects of the work but also on the selection of images and sequencing of their presentation. Prizes such as GradFoto are a great opportunity for developing photo-media artists to gauge where they sit at this early stage of their careers and can be a great boost to their future development. Samantha Poling’s submission ticked all of these boxes and presented a folio that included aspects of both photography and design in a considered and engaging manner.  It can be challenging for a student photographer to break out from a cloistered education environment to put their work out for critical assessment by an informed and respected panel, so I congratulate all the participants for having the courage to enter GradFoto 2022 and wish you all well on your respective photographic journeys.”

I have always been fascinated with objects and other people’s stuff, particularly with how things become the external representation of our personal and collective consciousness and a symbol of our place in society. In creating a home, we often surround ourselves with a selection of possessions, imbuing them with memories and tethering those objects to our notions of family and home. We see beautiful homes in all forms of today’s media. Even the language used to describe these idealised creations alludes to their constructed and unrealistic nature – homes are “staged”, they have “good bones”, and walls are “whitewashed”. But behind the facades are messy homes – physically, psychologically, and emotionally. In this series, I am questioning what is real and what is a facade as it pertains to the concepts of house and home and exploring photography’s complicity in maintaining the facade.

Highly Commended – Victoria Talaina

Reboot, 2022

The judges said, “The photographic series ‘Reboot’ was highly resolved, and a refreshing take on an editorial assignment. There is a bold and playful sense of colour, and her sense of humour is palpable!”

Reboot is a fashion editorial paying homage to Victoria’s colourful aesthetic and love for humour. Inspired by sitcoms and focusing on breakfast, the editorial offers a playful narrative of colour and pattern. Reboot features a bold and fun colour palette, with egg-citing textural elements weaved throughout. Filled with eggs on toast, slowly waking up, the rush of getting ready, and everything in between a good morning. Reboot aims to make the viewer laugh and indulge in this eggcellent fashion editorial. This has been achieved through photography, videography, graphics, and illustrations.

Highly commended – Kyle Archie Knight

Cruising for a Bruising, 2022

The judges said, “Cruising for a Bruising’ employs camp strategies to document Naarm’s (Melbourne) suburbs. It has a fresh and inquisitive approach that comments on a rich and layered history of Australian suburbia within contemporary art practice, in particular, photography.”

While suburbia is difficult to define, most people in Australia come from suburban humdrum backgrounds. Naarm’s (Melbourne’s) suburbs are often overlooked for their banality. They are inconsequential and paid no attention to due to their monotony. Cruising for a Bruising is focused on how through employing camp strategies, humdrum suburbia can be transformed into something camp and interesting. Camp is an acquisitive worldview, an aesthetic, it’s political. Camp is the appreciation of bad taste, finding pleasure in the daggy than the opulent, the love of the failure that despite itself, tries to be so serious. Influenced by queer historical and social understandings, such as cruising, camp, and growing up queer in suburbia, the series actively works to question our own visual and theoretical understandings and assumptions, and biases of what suburbia can be and look like. Historically the suburbs have been a place to flee from for queer people, they have not been welcoming due to homophobic attitudes. However, due to counter-urbanisation the suburbs, like society in general, have become more queer-friendly. Suburbia by nature is not camp, but through the methodology and methods, they are cast as camp. ‘Cruising for a Bruising’ serves as a love letter to the vanishing humdrum suburbia of Naarm, and finding beauty and humour through a queer, camp lens.

Hugo Webster

Landscape, 2022

The “moment of immersive connection” describes a phenomenon of experience akin to the Zen moment (sometimes referred to as satori), a moment of inward understanding and comprehension. Investigating this, the work explores theories of transparency and symmetry in our perception of art, finding ephemerality in moments of subjective rapport. Unpacking the revelatory capacity in the landscape, the work frames its experience through Minor White’s inner landscape, contextualising the work as a method of seeing a world beyond surfaces.

Originally portrayed in the form of a multichannel projection through constructed panels, the work proposes that the “moment of immersive connection” is found as we experience the internal landscape, phenomenologically, in the context of the multi-disciplinary installation.

Ashleigh Speechley

My muse for a year or two, 2022

In My muse for a year or two my family members take on characters illustrating relationships once hopeful now decayed. Utilising a few mediums, such as black and white 35mm film, Polaroid, and Tintype. My mum, dad and little cousin embody my vulnerabilities as I paint this considerably dire, melancholic narrative. It chronicles the intricate accounts of a soured relationship as I attempt to speak to the things, we hide about ourselves. Using what is traditionally considered bad framing, I frame my characters emotively, albeit rather uncomfortably as to add to the sense of unease and impending heartbreak. Ultimately this series speaks to deep longing and quiet desperation, the comfort and discomfort of familiarity. How we grow, fail to grow, and grow apart in relationships.

Manca Slapernik

Nudus, 2022

A series of tea-toned Cyanotype images are part of my Fine art book project called Nudus. My love for Fine Art Nude and the alternative printing process led me to create the book in which I attempted to convey the essence of the female form. The whole idea behind this project was to regard a female body with respect and an awareness that the image is a portrayal of an entire being captured in an instance, not segments of a female body, objectified and sexualised.

Emma Sanders

For this series, I was interested in showing how the interplay of light, shadows, materials, and patterns contribute to the visual understanding of interior space. By removing contextual information and instead focusing on small details, such as how light falls onto an object or the shape and lines of a structure, the images show a sense of temporality and the transformation of space due to the evolution of light. The subtle variations in light speak to the interconnectedness between the interior and exterior, with the outside light informing and altering internal reflections. The series therefore also explores space as something that encompasses mental and emotional experiences.

See Yean Pong

Balance of ideal and reality

Originally from Malaysia, See Yean Pong has been studying in Australia since 2017. Her series Balance of ideal and reality was created during the COVID lockdowns and driven by the felt need to escape. The series focuses on surrealism and fantasy and was inspired by a photographer named Kang Hee Kim. Originally driven by a desire to return to pre-lockdown and quarantine requirements, the series continued due to the prohibitive cost and logistics of returning to her home in Malaysia. By acknowledging it’s not possible to change everything back to normal immediately she was able to create the world for herself in the photographs.

Spenser Paul

Road Noise. 2022

Road Noise is a body of documentary work that explores the identity of the motorcyclist and its relationship with place through the narrative of a cross-country road trip from Los Angeles to New York City. Employing visual ethnographic techniques from the perspective of participant observer, Road Noise is an in-depth examination of the culture of the motorcyclist in the United States and the spaces in which the culture is performed. The original intention of Road Noise was to create a critical framework that critiqued what had been perceived as a male-dominated culture that had been commoditised by capitalism. What was found instead, was a robust culture of mostly men, that for the most part had rejected attempts to commodify it and had pivoted to an accepting community of individuals that by riding together, sharing stories, and exploring the space that they inhabit, create an identity that is focused on lifting one another up. As the road trip progressed, the motorcyclist’s relation to place became a serious focus of this body of work. As the motorcyclist experiences the landscape around them, they become a feature rather than a visitor. They perform within the landscape without the insulation of a car, a willing yet mandatory participant.

Rhy Dyball

As far as the mind can see, 2022

As far as the mind can see responds to the commonly shared pervasive sense of dread that characterise life in our era. Evoking anxiety that permeates the contemporary consciousness. Taking inspiration from globalisation’s effects creates anxiety and dread due to politics, global affairs, and economic crisis. Causing people to disconnect from traditional societal values like family, nation, and work. Because of this, people have become more individualistic and are taking their paths, disorientating people on which path to take in life. Creating a sense of dread for who we are and who we want to become. These attributes of society create a broadly shared sense of pervasive tension. These emotions of anxiety and looming dread are what I express in my imagery, referencing psychology and psychoanalysis to better understand how our subconscious reacts when shown certain cinematic techniques. Each image is a composite of roughly seven to fifteen images allowing acute attention to detail when crafting each image. Making each scene have a non-specific narrative that establishes a pregnant moment. Acting as a trigger that generates a sense of tension and uncertainty rather than a prescribed narrative.

Wilson Jedd Adams

This series showcases the extreme sides of nightlife fashion. I intended for it to show the gritty, grimy elements in the nightlife with blurry imagery. As well as show the anecdote of going to a 7/11 after a late night out or calling someone up to get home. This series is showing a journey from the extreme beauty of prints that refers Leigh Bowery. Among my works is a strong reference to Club Kids and nightlife fashions. I intended for this photo series to serve as an Alice in Wonderland version of a night out.