Sophie Gabrielle: Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat

Sophie Gabrielle, Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat, 2017–19. Image courtesy the artist.

Through channelling her interest in psychology, science and perception, Sophie Gabrielle creates poetically arresting images that reflect the fragility of the human body, psyche and experience. Combining archival imagery from MRI scans, brain synaptic structures and science experiments from the 1930s and 1940s, Gabrielle creates haunting narratives that interweave the personal and clinical.

Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is a dreamy and deeply personal exploration of the artist’s experiences with cancer, presenting medicinal botanicals and photographic portraits, alongside archival images from obscure medical research catalogues. Photographed through plates of glass to catch minute particles of her own skin—images are overlayed with the artists’ own DNA—creating interwoven, abstract self-portraits.

“Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is an exploration drawn from my experiences with cancer through optics and chemical interactions, and an investigative process to photograph that which is generally invisible to the naked eye.

This project started as a coping mechanism to address the impact cancer has had on my life over the past few years, after all the men in my family were diagnosed with stage four cancer. These works give a sense of the unsettled, fragile, daunting and overwhelming aspects that have culminated during this time in my life.”

— Sophie Gabrielle, 2019

Sophie Gabrielle is a Melbourne based artist and curator working between analogue and digital photographic practices. Graduating from Photography Studies College in 2015, her work has been exhibited in Australia, Malaysia, New York, UK and Amsterdam. In 2018, Gabrielle was the first Australian chosen as a finalist for Foam Talent, Foam Fotografiemuseum, Amsterdam. In 2016, Gabrielle was a finalist for the Lensculture Emerging Talent Award.