The 2007 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: PAUL KNIGHT
Untitled 2006
type C print
142 x 164 cm
© the artist
Untitled 2006
type C print
149 x 120 cm
© the artist
In his direct and uninflected pictures Paul Knight shows ordinary people doing the things ordinary people do, but ordinary photographers don’t photograph. The literal and emotional nakedness of his camera subjects is remarkably frank. Knight has gone to great lengths to avoid the kind of mundane blandness or gritty exposé that often characterises social realist photography. His photographs are intensely intimate and strangely ambiguous. The viewer cannot know for certain whether these are scenes of love or despair, ecstasy or anger. The cumulative effect, however, is distinctly bleak, and creates an impression that Knight is stripping away some of the niceties of conventional appearance that give society its comfortable insulation.
He presents scenes of slightly skewed normality with unfiltered brightness and clarity that eliminate the possibility of evocative atmosphere. The images are uncompromising and sometimes startling, but instead of harshness, their realism creates an unexpectedly poetic tenderness. As in the paintings of Lucian Freud, the voluptuousness and vulnerability of flesh becomes a subject in its own right. The situations that Knight depicts are often emotionally charged, yet give no sense of theatricality. Viewers get the strange feeling of actually being there, but we’re not sure we should be.
Timothy Morell
from his Samstag catalogue essay;
Loose connections
| Born 1976, Sydney, New South Wales | ||
| 2001 | Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne | |
| Awards | 2007 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship |
| 2004 | Australia Council, new work grant Besen Foundation, Arts and Culture grant |
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| Individual Exhibitions | 2006 | closer, Neon Parc, Melbourne Don’t be something strong, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney |
| 2005 | Photographs, Andrea Brenner
Galerie, Düsseldorf, Germany Photographs, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art |
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| 2004 | like a leaf clings to a tree, oh my darling cling to me…,
Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne Photographs, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne |
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| 2003 | Untitled portrait (as proposition), Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne | |
| 2002 | Krater crater, Centre for
Contemporary Photography, Melbourne A sensation of self/locating a position, Penthouse & Pavement, Melbourne |
|
| Selected Group Exhibitions | 2006 | City of Perth Photo-media Award,
Perth Institute of Contemporary Art Stellar, fundraiser auction, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne kids stay free, Neon Parc, Melbourne Gold coast Ulrich Schubert photographic art award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland |
| 2005 | This urban world, Devonport
Regional Gallery, Tasmania Nature by Proxy, Brian Moore Gallery, Sydney Art Fair Köln, Andrea Brenner Galerie, Köln, Germany Mittsommer Special, Galerie Andrea Brenner, Düsseldorf, Germany Awkward Silences, Linden Art Gallery, Melbourne MGA Collection: Recent Acquisitions, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne a portable model of…, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania Outdooring, Gallery Senkukan, Tokyo, Japan Rotterdam International Art Fair, Canvas International Art stand, Rotterdam, The Netherlands |
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| 2004 | 3 Australian Photographers, Canvas International Art, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands Gold coast Ulrich Schubert photographic art award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland |
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| 2003 | Gertrude studios 2003, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces,
Melbourne Refresh: Five Years of Photo Technica, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney outTakeout, Kings Gallery, Melbourne I heard it on the grapevine…, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne Return to the real: contemporary photo-media, Burnie Regional Gallery, Burnie, Tasmania Spatial Condoms/Premature Evacuation (with Chantal Faust), BUS, Melbourne Return to the real: contemporary photo-media, Plimsoll Gallery, Hobart Bloom: Perceiving independence, Span Galleries, Melbourne |
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| 2002 | Gertrude studios 2002, Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne | |
| 2001 | Photo technica award, the whole picture – new Australian photo
artists, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney Stellar, fundraiser auction, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Between place and non-place, VCA Gallery, Melbourne Interval response, Open space arts society, Victoria, Canada; and Old School House Gallery, Qualicum Beach, Canada |
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| Commissions | 2006 | Venice Architecture Biennale 2006, Australian Pavilion, Venice, Italy |
| Collections | Monash University Museum of Art National Gallery of Victoria Monash Gallery of Art Bouwfonds (Amsterdam) Corrigan collection Gold Coast City Art Gallery |