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
Virtual Listening
As the common saying goes, “seeing is believing”. It seems this applies as much to physical experiences as it does to virtual ones. Whether visiting Linz in person or online, it is frequently visual perception that takes priority and informs one’s sense of place. What new realities might emerge, then, if the virtual and physical spaces of Linz are instead experienced via sound?
In Virtual Listening the audience is invited to explore this question through a site specific, participatory sonic experience. In this 10-minute experience, the audience is blindfolded and transported by the artists through the FMR 23 festival site on a specially created vehicle. During this journey the audience encounters their surroundings via a geolocated narration and soundscape, generated from AI and artist’s encounters with Linz in both physical and virtual space. A key part of these sound layers was a spoken narration. The focus of this narration was to both guide the user through the festival site, while offering various fragments discussing how digitisation and virtual worlds shape and are shaped by society. Within this work, the audience also hears additional soundscapes crafted by Jim Zweerts, a Netherlands-based sound artist and electronic music producer.
The journey ends with the audience member being safely returned to their original starting location and their blindfold removed. How has this experience changed their perception of Linz? How can they share these new auditory memories with others? With their vision now returned, can they piece together the path they traveled? Did they even travel anywhere at all? Is it that “hearing is believing”?
The project was exhibited in the FMR23 – Biennial, a festival for art in digital contexts and public spaces that took place in Linz, Austria, from June 6 to 11, 2023.






During a month-long residency at Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz in March 2023, the artists created soundscapes that interweaves a spoken narrative with sound collages harvested from both physical and virtual spaces. Adding to the auditory richness, the audience can hear the additional music and sound design crafted by Jim Zweerts, a Netherlands-based sound artist and electronic music producer.
This project is supported by LINZ FMR
Additional support from Stroom Den Haag

