PATRICK POUND
PHOTOGRAPHY AND AIR 2016
(a collection of found photos)

18 MAY TO 18 JUNE 2016

Opening: Wednesday 18 May, 6-8pm

For Patrick Pound, what started out as a form of research - the collecting and collating of vast archives of vernacular material, photos, books and objects - morphed into his art practice. He upcycles images and objects that have been discarded. Cut loose from their original creator and purpose, Pound gives them new contexts and meanings. In so doing, he asks us to consider the nature of photography; the creation of meaning; and the human urge to make sense of the world around us.

For Pound there is more truth and insight to be found amongst collections of photos, than there is in trying to make new ones. In creating connections, he is also able to explore ideas, phenomena and curious human tendencies that can’t be captured in a single frame. How do you photograph the wind or air, for instance?

Photography and Air 2016 consists of numerous found photographs of people and things that are in some way affected by the wind; from a candle in the breeze to a hovering plane, a yacht’s billowing sail to a young woman at the beach, her hair blown by the breeze. Images are selected from a vast array of sources that include defunct newspaper archives and abandoned family albums. While disparate in origin, together they form a prosaic yet poetic portrait. Pound’s interest in the idea of photographing something you can’t see extends to other works in this exhibition where he pairs photographs to capture the time between them.

Pound’s other artworks have included a collection of fallen or sleeping figures in People Who Look Dead But (Probably) Aren’t and a revaluation of a classic photographic faux-pas in The Photographers Shadow. There are as many possible permutations as there are stray photographs or human foibles – limited only by the artist’s storage space and his imagination.

Patrick Pound has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including The Photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2015); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2014); 3th Dong Gang International Photo Festival, Dong Gang Museum of Photography, Korea (2014); The Small Infinite, John Hansard Gallery, UK (2014); Liquid Archive, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2012); The Basil Sellers Art Prize, Ian Potter Museum of Art, VIC (2012); Present Tense: An imagined grammar of portraiture in the digital age, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra (2010). In 2015, Pound was a finalist in the AGDA Design Awards. His work is held in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of New Zealand, Auckland Art Gallery, and the Dunedin Art Gallery.