Claire Conroy, Habitats #2 Open Aviary (2007)
Artists: Claire Conroy
Work: Habitats #2 Open Aviary (2007)
Location: Kellerberrin, Western Australia
Open Aviary is part two in IASKA’s Habitats, a project based on a collaboration between research scientists from CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and contemporary artists participating in the IASKA artists in residence program. Scientists and artists work with local communities, land care groups and rural students to research the interaction between natural and human living environments in the Wallatin/O’Brian catchment area (Western Australian Wheatbelt).
Habitats focuses on transitional zones where natural and human living environments overlap, clash and intermingle. Works will examine different modes of cohabitation - sometimes conflicting sometimes complementary - between people, plants and animals sharing contested territories.
About the artist:
Claire Conroy is an Australian artist using unique photographic techniques to create evocative contemporary images. In an era when most photography is taking place in the digital realm, Conroy’s work involves the use of centuries-old analogue photographic processes, such as the camera obscura and pinhole photography.
Conroy constructs her own pinhole cameras and darkrooms from found objects, including a 1950s caravan, a water tank and a three tonne truck. She uses these devices to expose images of the Australian landscape onto photographic paper, creating large scale negatives that reflect Romantic melancholic notions of the landscape and our impact upon it. She develops these negatives using common household supplies and natural substances. The resultant works are enigmatic and haunting interpretations of the physical world.
Her photographic practice extends to installation where the caravan camera obscura becomes a device to reinterpret landscapes in a playful and immersive way. Within the camera obscura the installations tap into and twist the historic realms of travelling curiosities, Renaissance drawing techniques and the historic carnival of the scientific roadshow.
Conroy’s works have been collected by the NSW State Library, the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum and in private collections across Australia. She is currently teaches Visual Art and Photography at Bradfield Senior College and Sydney College of the Arts.
Claire Conroy, Habitats (2007)