SPACE 3 :
JANINE MCGUINNESS
Exhibition dates. 20 April - 1 May, 2022
Opening Reception : Thur 21 April 2022, 6:00 - 8.30pm.
Janine’s contemporary, fine art photographic practice concerns the intertwined relationship of people, place, space, and time. Works are often disorienting images of natural space that serve as metaphors for emotional and psychological experiences and are frequently highly experimental. The transience and memory of self and place have also been strong themes in her work. Indeed, place is assumed to be a transformed and highly uncertain setting where the relationship of reality, to the viewer and the internal emotional world, is not fixed.
In this exhibition, she investigates how experience and memories of a place can be very transitional and dynamic. Using landscape photography as a canvas and basis for exploration, many of the images include additional, translucent layers of graffiti or 3D created objects. These marks and objects – especially given associated features such as translucence and transformation of colour – are used as metaphors for transition and change.
Janine McGuinness is a Melbourne-based Artist who holds a Masters of Contemporary Art from VCA, as well as various other qualifications such as a Certificate in Photography and Photoimaging from RMIT, and a PhD from La Trobe University. She has been awarded various prizes including the Galloway Lawson Prize, and her work was nominated for inclusion in the Lumen Prize Long List and other awards. She regularly exhibits in artist-run galleries.
@janine.mcguinness
The Artist
Interview with artist: Janine McGuinness
1. Your work sits in between photographs and paintings. Can you discuss the decision to present your work in this format?
For a long time now, I have experimented with different ways of breaking down the distinction between painting and photography, so the presentation of work in this particular format just seemed like a natural progression to me.
My 2018 exhibition - 'Transitions in Time' - held at Black Cat Gallery was an important moment for me in this journey. In that exhibition, there were several works that pushed the boundaries between painting and photography. The exhibition included an image printed onto fabric and another work where the photographic images was printed onto fabric and then painted over with silk ink and then re-photographed and re-printed onto aluminium. Likewise, another work involved painting directly over an aluminium printed image and there was a moving image that involved 'digital painting'.
2. Your images are often overlaid with other objects and shapes, how do these relate to the idea of transition and change?
Yes, that is true. In my past work, natural space has served as a metaphor for emotional and psychological experiences and the transience and memory of self and place have also been strong themes in my work. For me, place is assumed to be a transformed and highly uncertain setting where the relationship of reality, to the viewer and the internal emotional world, is not fixed.
I tend to treat and regard the objects and shapes in my images as things that reflect or reveal this transition and change.
Q & Photography : BLACKCAT GALLERY & Isabella Imperatore
The Exhibition
