Justine Varga
Australia Council for the Arts Residency
2014
Justine Varga’s artistic practice demonstrates a sustained interrogation of what we assume photographs to be, and what we expect them to do. Utilising physical manipulations of the material surfaces she works with, Justine touches, smears and inverts negatives, she layers and overlaps exposures, she retains the visual residue of their processes of becoming. In doing so, her photographs make visible an art practice that is at once physical and chemical, autobiographical and contingent, painterly and photographic. Though her work, she asks viewers to reflect on the activity of decipherment in relation to photographs, as a critical rumination on inscription, meaning and knowledge.
Justine has recently exhibited at Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand (2019-20); Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (2019); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2019); Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide (2019) and National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2018-19). She was the winner of the 2019 Dobell Drawing Prize; the Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture (2017) and has twice received the Josephine Ulrick & Win Shubert Foundation for the Arts Photography Award (2013, 2016). Her work has been acquired for the collections of the National Gallery of Australia; Art Gallery of New South Wales and Art Gallery of South Australia, among others.
Image: Justine Varga, TarraWarra Biennial 2018: From Will to Form installation view, TarraWarra Museum of Art, 2018. Photo: Andrew Curtis. Courtesy of the artist, Hugo Michell Gallery and Tolarno Galleries.
Australia Council for the Arts
Since 1992, the Australia Council for the Arts has partnered with Acme to provide London work/live residency opportunities for Australian visual artists. These residencies are located at Acme's Fire Station in Poplar, E14. Application and selection is undertaken directly by the Australia Council for the Arts.
For more information visit australiacouncil.gov.au
