Index

Index brings together seven photographic artists with converging interests across collecting, categorising and arranging, with a focus on the way meaning is derived through the lens of the studio and studio-based practice. Through revisiting images over time, organising, shuffling and reordering, Index considers the personal, tactile and physical aspects of working within the studio, and the unexpected outcomes that can often become the most meaningful.

Featuring Olga Bennett (VIC), Christopher Day (VIC), Karl Fritsch (NZ) and Gavin Hipkins (NZ), Sarah Mosca (NSW), Saskia Pandji Sakti (VIC) and Benjamin Sexton (VIC), Index will be a collection of studio fragments that ask us to consider the significance of small gestures, considered moments and studio experiments.

This exhibition is supported by ARTEN framing, Melbourne.

Olga Bennett is an artist and researcher from Russia currently living and working in Narrm/Melbourne. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2017, and has exhibited at Bus Projects, CAVES, Center for Contemporary Photography, The Substation, KINGS Artist-Run, Monash Gallery of Art, C3 Contemporary, LON and Margaret Lawrence galleries (all in Melbourne), COMA gallery (Sydney), CalArts gallery (Los Angeles) and Gallery Kiitos (Japan). In 2019, Bennett completed a residency at Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. Her recent body of work considers how experiences of physical and emotional vulnerability are reflected in images and words.

Christopher Day (b. 1978, Melbourne, lives and works in Melbourne) is a visual artist whose work focuses on a reflective examination of our material world. Day’s photographs and collages are deliberately ambiguous and compressed, functioning through layers of meaning. Day has held solo exhibitions including New Reading Order, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2016); Permanent Deferral, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2013), End, Curtain House, Melbourne (2012); After The Breadcrumbs, Black & Blue Gallery, Sydney and Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2009); and A Little Boob, Victoria Park Gallery, Melbourne (2008).

Selected group exhibitions include An Unorthodox Flow of Images, curated by Naomi Cass and Pippa Milne, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2017); Master of Three Worlds, curated by Sotiris Sotiriou, COMA, Sydney (2017); Perceptual Abstraction, curated by Charlotte Cornish, The Honeymoon Suite, Melbourne (2017); Under The Sun, curated by Claire Monneraye, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne and State Library of New South Wales, Sydney (2017); New Matter, curated by Isobel Parker Phillip, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2016); and Lurid Beauty, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2015). Day’s work is held in numerous private and public collections in Australia, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of Western Australia, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Karl Fritsch (b. 1963 in Sonthofen, Germany, lives and works in New Zealand) is a jeweller renowned for his iconoclastic reinterpretations of jewellery tradition. Fritsch often uses existing pieces as a starting point, removing or replacing stones, recasting settings and oxidizing metal, to create wholly unique renovations of traditional jewellery. Using precious materials, his forms challenge notions of materiality, value and beauty. His highly covetable rings have seen him win numerous awards and become a cult figure in contemporary jewellery. Fritsch began his education at the Goldsmiths School in Pforzheim and later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Professors Hermann Jünger and Professor Otto Künzli. Fritsch exhibits internationally and has had his work included in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington; and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.

Karl Fritsch is represented Hamish McKay, Wellington.

Gavin Hipkins (b. 1968, Auckland) is an artist and film-maker, who has presented his work at institutions and film festivals throughout New Zealand and internationally. Selected exhibitions and screenings include at QAGOMA, Brisbane (2018); International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018, 2015); Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany (2017, 2016); Uppsala International Short Film Festival, Sweden (2017); The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Museum of Arts and Design, New York (2014); Edinburgh Art Festival (2014); The Armoury Show, New York (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); Austrian Museum of Applied Art and Contemporary Art (MAK), Vienna (2011); Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2010); San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego (2007); International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York (2006); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2004); CCA Watts Institute for Contemporary Arts, California (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2000); and Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, Guanine d’ Alba, Italy, (2000).

Hipkins represented New Zealand at the 1998 Sydney Biennale and the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennale. His work is included in major public and private collections, including the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Auckland Art Gallery, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, and George Eastman Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York. He is currently Associate Professor at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.

Gavin Hipkins is represented Hamish McKay, Wellington.

Sarah Mosca lives and works in the Blue Mountains, NSW. Moving between photography, sculpture, process and research, Sarah Mosca restages and re-presents historical narratives and mythologies in order to unveil ideas and truths that may otherwise be forgotten or overlooked. Her work has been exhibited extensively across Sydney, Melbourne, New York and Germany. Recent exhibitions include NGA Contemporary, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2016); The Alchemists, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2015); Care, Interstate Projects, New York (2015); and Cataracts and Waterfalls, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (2015). Her work is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), Canberra, and in private collections in Australia, Germany and America. Mosca was recently awarded a 2020 residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris.

Sarah Mosca is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.

Saskia Pandji Sakti is a Melbourne based artist working primarily with photography. Saskia Pandji Sakti completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at RMIT University, Melbourne in 2005. Selected solo and group exhibitions include In Bloom, curated by Madé Spencer-Castle & Jeremy Eaton, Spring 1883, Hotel Windsor, Melbourne, (2018); Saskia Pandji Sakti & Reiko Miyazawa, organised by André Piguet, The Honeymoon Suite, Melbourne, (2017); Timelapse, curated by Simon Gregg, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, (2016); David Mutch-Eric Demetriou-Saskia Pandji Sakti, Lindberg Galleries, Melbourne, (2015); The Dark Arts, curated by Linsey Gosper, Strange Neighbour, Melbourne, (2013); If Loss Could Weigh, curated by Daniel Price, TCB Art Inc., Melbourne, (2011); Medium Paranormals, Bus Projects, Melbourne, (2011); and Little Did They Know, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne, (2008).

Benjamin Sexton (né Lichtenstein) (b. Indonesia, lives and works in Melbourne), is an artist who works predominantly with photography, emphasising the post-production values of the medium. He utilises his own photographic archive to alter images through experimental darkroom processes, such as masking and misregistration, to form new compositions. Selected solo and collaborative exhibitions include Touch, Daine Singer, Melbourne (2019); Keen, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne (2018); Bound For Glory, a collaboration with Oscar Perry, The Honeymoon Suite, Melbourne (2017); Living in Oblivion, Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne (2015); Flower, Fort Delta, Melbourne (2015); Crescent, Neospace, Melbourne (2014); and I Know You Will Be Happy Here, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne (2013). Group exhibitions include Illusions and Allusions, Missing Persons (2018); Group Show: Second Iteration, Arts Project Australia, Melbourne (2016); The Bends, PhotoAccess, Canberra (2016); The Alchemists: Rediscovering Photography in the Age of the Jpeg, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2015) and Mental, Muddguts Gallery, New York (2014).