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The 2007 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships

| Anthea Behm | Sarah CrowEST | Kirra Jamison | Paul Knight |
| Jess MacNeil | Nick Mangan |

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
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
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
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
  2004 3 Australian Photographers, Canvas International Art, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Gold coast Ulrich Schubert photographic art award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland
  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
  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
 
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
 

| Anthea Behm | Sarah CrowEST | Kirra Jamison | Paul Knight |
| Jess MacNeil | Nick Mangan |