Know Thy Neighbour #3 artist focus: Duncan Wright
Through our programming, we have the opportunity to work alongside many diverse artists to realise an ambitious series of public activations. In the Know Thy Neighbour #3 program, artist Olga Cironis has been collaborating with Duncan Wright to investigate the relationships that the community of Armadale have to their place of dwelling.
Duncan Wright is a Western Australian photographic artist and director, and the founder of West End Workers Studio in Walyalup/Fremantle. He studied under Max Pam and Kevin Ballantine at Edith Cowan University in Perth, before moving to the Vahland Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg, Sweden to finish his degree. While working commercially across a diverse range of clientele, Duncan also maintains an artistic practice that combines conceptual, commercial and journalistic approaches.
With a background in community development and a lifelong interest in the everyday people that make a place, Duncan prides himself on creating authentic imagery through meaningful and involved collaboration with subjects, merging different ways of seeing and of processing images that draw from both historical and contemporary visual languages. His work is highly research-driven, often the culmination of much image study and personal immersion in his areas of interest, which span human story and social documentary—from local sport to beach combing culture—as well as the environment and landscape, conceptual still life and music.
He has exhibited in various group exhibitions, including the esteemed 2021 Fremantle Art Centre Print Award in which he was a finalist. He has had two solo shows: Happiness (2021) at the Perth Centre of Photography and A Resonance, which formed part of the Fremantle Biennale 2021 program. His work is also housed in the collection of the State Library of Western Australia, and has been commissioned by The Australian, The Guardian and Australian Financial Review, as well as the Western Australian state government and high profile musicians such as Tame Impala, Ta-ku, POND, Methyl Ethel and San Cisco. Duncan's ongoing body of work Fire, documenting the impacts of rising temperatures and the prevalence of bushfires in the Western Australian landscape, was nominated for the internationally renowned Prix Pictet award in 2021.