News from Home is a collaboration between visual artist and sociologist Luke Conroy (Australia) and documentary filmmaker and visual artist Anne Fehres (The Netherlands). The core aim of ‘News From Home’ is to engage with the people, objects and stories which make up a local community and communicate these through visual art pieces.
These art pieces take the form of digital photo montages. Each of these montages contains between 2 and 200 individual ‘layers’ which are sourced from the thousands of photographs captured by the artists, alongside archival images sourced from the community in which the project is undertaken.
The starting point for News From Home is the humble postcard. The artists are interested in how the postcard presents highly constructed and idyllic images of a place, yet at the same time fails to acknowledge the more authentic but messy reality of that place. The constructed images of the postcard promote a particular ‘tourist gaze’ of a location, whereby the those who visit a place only seek out to confirm the stylised images and experiences seen in postcards, rather than question them or consider a place on a deeper level. It is this ‘deeper level’ consideration that lays at the heart of this project.
'News From Home' is an ongoing project that has been selected for undertaking in six locations during 2019. See works from these locations below and follow our project on Instagram: @news_from_home
If you are interested in viewing a summary portfolio of this project, click here
News from Home is a collaboration between visual artist and sociologist Luke Conroy (Australia) and documentary filmmaker and visual artist Anne Fehres (The Netherlands). The core aim of ‘News From Home’ is to engage with the people, objects and stories which make up a local community and communicate these through visual art pieces.
These art pieces take the form of digital photo montages. Each of these montages contains between 2 and 200 individual ‘layers’ which are sourced from the thousands of photographs captured by the artists, alongside archival images sourced from the community in which the project is undertaken.
The starting point for News From Home is the humble postcard. The artists are interested in how the postcard presents highly constructed and idyllic images of a place, yet at the same time fails to acknowledge the more authentic but messy reality of that place. The constructed images of the postcard promote a particular ‘tourist gaze’ of a location, whereby the those who visit a place only seek out to confirm the stylised images and experiences seen in postcards, rather than question them or consider a place on a deeper level. It is this ‘deeper level’ consideration that lays at the heart of this project.
'News From Home' is an ongoing project that has been selected for undertaking in six locations during 2019. See works from these locations below and follow our project on Instagram: @news_from_home
If you are interested in viewing a summary portfolio of this project, click here
News from Home is a collaboration between visual artist and sociologist Luke Conroy (Australia) and documentary filmmaker and visual artist Anne Fehres (The Netherlands). The core aim of ‘News From Home’ is to engage with the people, objects and stories which make up a local community and communicate these through visual art pieces.
These art pieces take the form of digital photo montages. Each of these montages contains between 2 and 200 individual ‘layers’ which are sourced from the thousands of photographs captured by the artists, alongside archival images sourced from the community in which the project is undertaken.
The starting point for News From Home is the humble postcard. The artists are interested in how the postcard presents highly constructed and idyllic images of a place, yet at the same time fails to acknowledge the more authentic but messy reality of that place. The constructed images of the postcard promote a particular ‘tourist gaze’ of a location, whereby the those who visit a place only seek out to confirm the stylised images and experiences seen in postcards, rather than question them or consider a place on a deeper level. It is this ‘deeper level’ consideration that lays at the heart of this project.
'News From Home' is an ongoing project that has been selected for undertaking in six locations during 2019. See works from these locations below and follow our project on Instagram: @news_from_home
If you are interested in viewing a summary portfolio of this project, click here
Phantasm
Exhibition at Hošek Contemporary - Berlin, Germany
Exhibition period: May - June 2019
Phantasm is a video installation presenting various surreal scenes that explore the notions of ‘nature’ and ‘the natural’. The project involves various video projections in the main exhibition space of Hošek Contemporary, an old cargo boat floating on the River Spree.
In Phantasm the audience is invited to consider the complex relationships that we as humans have with the concept of ‘nature’. It is a relationship where often nature is perceived as wild and unpredictable, something to escape from and have mastery over. At the same time however, it is also framed as an idyllic and nourishing place that we need to ‘get back in touch with’.
Further complexity around the idea of ‘nature’ is then added once labels such as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’ are applied to people, ideas, actions and inventions. What is left is a concept of ‘nature’ that is full of contradiction and confusion, where the lines between what is considered ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’, the human world and the natural world are constantly blurred. This confused state acts as the starting point for the artists in Phantasm.
In this project the artists have brought together original footage sourced from Europe, Asia and Australia, alongside found footage and 3D objects. Each of these elements come together to form an abstract narrative spanning science, technology and culture. This narrative has been constructed through research into the curious ways that humans interact with and consider nature. Some of the ideas presented are the recent developments in human cloning, the ’cloud seeding’ technology that allows artificial influence the weather, the health and beauty industry’s pressure to look and eat ‘natural’ as well as our manipulation of animals to act as food, friends, religious icons, entertainment and space explorers. When each of these layers, alongside various others, are considered alongside one another it highlights the confusion, complexity and contradiction at the heart of ‘nature’.
More information about the project and exhibition: Hošek Contemporary
Registration video and visual documentation Phantasm - Exhibition at Hošek Contemporary, Berlin (2019)
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