Exhibitions

Centre for
Contemporary
Photography

Current exhibition:

‘Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits’, June 5 – Aug 16, 2025

RMIT Gallery, 344 Swanston St, Melbourne

 

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January 27 – 12 March, 2017

James Tunks: Elsewhere

  • James Tunks

James Tunks, Crushed and pulverized 35mm Minolta wide angle lens, still photograph from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, aspirin migraine, coconut, viewfinder prism, paperback cover of Jorge Luis Borges Labyrinths, found hunting arrow, Icelandic flag sew on embroidered patch, ground espresso, page from Francois Laurelle’s The Concept of Non Photography, pistachio husks, photograph of lion paintings from Chauvets Cave, dried hibiscus, type-c print, 85 x 130cm, courtesy the artist.

The new series of works, Elsewhere, combines James Tunks’ fascination with astronomical photography, indirect forms of self-portraiture and the transmutation of objects and images.

Instead of photographing stars themselves, Tunks constructs the photographs using predominately found and accumulated material that is crushed and pulverized to mirror interstellar nebula. This process forms constellations between otherwise arbitrary materials whilst at the same time echoing the history of astrophotography and its pioneers such as Edwin Hubble and EE Barnard.