honorable mention
ODETTE ENGLAND
title
Thrice Upon A Time
Twenty-two years later, Mum and Dad performed a collaborative 'homecoming' on my behalf. Every month for one year, they revisited our former farm, wearing on the soles of their shoes a set of negatives I had made at the farm in 2005, when I took photographs of places where they had made snapshots of me as a child. As my parents walked the farm, the negatives became abraded and imprinted with local dirt and debris. The negatives were then returned to me, some so damaged they had to be pieced together with tweezers.
This series is a movement of reclamation and transcription. Since we can no longer work the land with our hands, I work it through the lens, and tread, of my parents. The dominant motive for this work is my longing for an idealised vision of home. The resulting images mythologise my holy land, an inheritance I ache for.
She is a two-time UK winner of the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Emerging Photographers competition, and in 2012 won the prestigious CENTER $5,000 Project Launch Award, juried by Virginia Heckert, Associate Curator, J. Paul Getty Museum. An exhibition of her award winning series Thrice Upon A Time was shown at the New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM).
Most recently England has been named a finalist for three major Australian photographic prizes: the 2014 $15,000 Sunshine Coast Art Prize; the 2014 $10,000 DUO Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize; and the 2014 $4,000 IRIS Award by the Perth Centre for Photography.
England graduated with Honors from the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA Photography) in 2012. She is represented in the US (east coast) by KLOMPCHING GALLERY and currently teaches photography at the University of South Australia.
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entry description
I grew up on a dairy farm in South Australia. Falling milk prices and rising maintenance costs forced my parents, under the threat of bankruptcy, to sell everything and leave in 1989. I was fourteen years old.Twenty-two years later, Mum and Dad performed a collaborative 'homecoming' on my behalf. Every month for one year, they revisited our former farm, wearing on the soles of their shoes a set of negatives I had made at the farm in 2005, when I took photographs of places where they had made snapshots of me as a child. As my parents walked the farm, the negatives became abraded and imprinted with local dirt and debris. The negatives were then returned to me, some so damaged they had to be pieced together with tweezers.
This series is a movement of reclamation and transcription. Since we can no longer work the land with our hands, I work it through the lens, and tread, of my parents. The dominant motive for this work is my longing for an idealised vision of home. The resulting images mythologise my holy land, an inheritance I ache for.
about the photographer
Odette England (1975, Australian/British) has participated in exhibitions across Europe, the USA, and Australia including solo exhibitions at Light House, Wolverhampton, UK; Three White Walls Gallery, Birmingham, UK; and Durham Art Gallery, Durham, UK; and group exhibitions at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film (Rochester, NY); the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago, IL); the Photographic Resource Center (Boston, MA); the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center (Philadelphia, PA); the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO); Host Gallery (London, UK) and the Newspace Center for Photography (Portland, OR).She is a two-time UK winner of the Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Emerging Photographers competition, and in 2012 won the prestigious CENTER $5,000 Project Launch Award, juried by Virginia Heckert, Associate Curator, J. Paul Getty Museum. An exhibition of her award winning series Thrice Upon A Time was shown at the New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM).
Most recently England has been named a finalist for three major Australian photographic prizes: the 2014 $15,000 Sunshine Coast Art Prize; the 2014 $10,000 DUO Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize; and the 2014 $4,000 IRIS Award by the Perth Centre for Photography.
England graduated with Honors from the Rhode Island School of Design (MFA Photography) in 2012. She is represented in the US (east coast) by KLOMPCHING GALLERY and currently teaches photography at the University of South Australia.
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