Image Reader

Image Reader considers how do we visually read, internalise, process or decode the images that circulate around us? Engaging with four artists who destabilise a linear reading of the image—Guy Grabowsky, Nina Gilbert, Ry Haskings and Eliza Hutchison—Image Reader explores the power photography has to visually communicate, and subconsciously influence our reading of the world.

Acutely attuned to this subliminal process of visually reading, the artists in Image Reader obscure the lines between the legible and the indecipherable, moving between digital, analogue and sculptural photographic practices. By highlighting the non-linearity of memory, the architectural and site-specific contexts images inhabit, or through drawing our attention to the overlooked in beguiling ways, Image Reader points towards a visual language that is simultaneously perplexing, deeply idiosyncratic and constantly present, whether we can read it or not.

Curated by Madé Spencer-Castle

Nina Gilbert graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Photography) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2014. She has exhibited her work in Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, Turin and Berlin. Recent exhibitions include, Several beautiful angles at KINGS Artist-Run, Melbourne (2018); Looking but not Seeing, curated by Kiron Robinson, Benalla Art Gallery, Benalla (2018); Crybaby Screening, Outer Space, Brisbane (2018); Versions, Sutton Projects, Melbourne (2017); The Image Shadow, Bus Projects, Melbourne (2016); and Archiving and Fragmentation in the Digital Age with SOAP, Fort Delta, Melbourne (2015). She is a co-organiser of recess, an online platform for video and moving image works with Olivia Koh and Kate Meakin.

Guy Grabowsky is a Melbourne-based artist working with analogue photography. Guy graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018. Guy has been a recipient of the Fiona Myer, Mount Buller Residency and Plumm Wine Glass awards. Selected solo and group exhibitions include, Beyond the Veil, Blindside, Melbourne (2018); Untitled Spaces, KINGS Artist-Run, Melbourne (2018); Yet Another Image, Bus Projects, Melbourne (2018); Nine, Red Gallery, Melbourne (2017); Transit, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne (2017); past/present, Trocadero Art Space, Melbourne (2017); Majlis Travelling Scholarship, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2017).

Ry Haskings is a Melbourne-based artist who completed a PhD at Monash University in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include Knitlock Hoarders Sentinel, Gertrude Glasshouse, Melbourne (2017); Rapa Nui Ranelagh, West Space, Melbourne (2015); Thamasat Fuel Fabrication, Sutton Projects, Melbourne (2014); Unpacked bucket Llama Chute, Shepparton Art Museum, Victoria (2010); Burros Ballot, TCB Art Inc., Melbourne (2010); and Backtrack AKA (Catchfire), Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2009). He has been included in various group exhibitions including Melbourne Now – Drawing Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2014); In the Cut, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2013); Self-conscious: Contemporary Portraiture, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2012); and Ménage à Trois, Enjoy Gallery, Wellington (2012).

Eliza Hutchison was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and lives and works in Melbourne. Hutchison has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and Asia, including at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Asian Biennale, Centre for Contemporary Photography, National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Balnaves Contemporary, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Hutchison was educated at RMIT, where she studied film, sculpture and photography. She has worked as an educator in Art and Design and Art Theory at RMIT and Swinburne, Melbourne. Hutchison’s work is featured as part of The National 2019: New Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2019.

Eliza Hutchison is represented by Murray White Room, Melbourne.