Perimeter Editions x Kathryn McCool | Melbourne Book Launch
As part of the NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair's satellite program, come celebrate the launch of Kathryn McCool – P.North (Perimeter Editions 081) at Perimeter Books (734 High St, Thornbury) on Friday May 26, 6pm–8pm. McCool's debut photobook will be launched by Pippa Milne, Curator at PHOTO 2024 and previously the Centre of Contemporary Photography and Museum of Australian Photography (formerly Monash Gallery of Art). A signing by the artist and celebratory refreshments will follow. We hope to see you there!
EVENT DETAILS
Perimeter Books
734 High St, Thornbury VIC
Friday May 26, 2023
From 6pm–8pm
This is a free event, with no reservations required.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The title P.North doesn’t refer to a place in the purest sense of the word. Drawing on a series of photographs made in rural New Zealand and Australia chiefly during the 1980s and 1990s, Kathryn McCool’s debut book floats between decades, locations, people, and the less palpable dynamics that connect them.
Shopkeepers, youths, churchgoers, young children, and animals populate these photographs – nondescript landscapes and sleepy, small-town goings-on building a strangely loaded backdrop. McCool’s unusual photographic signature only feeds this intangible atmosphere. Shifting focal points, analogue detritus, and incursions into the frame – by way of an errant arm, shadow or balloon – evoke both a tenderness and an unease. Whichever the case, these images hold great weight and presence. Almost every character and every composition elicits a double take. The seemingly benign distorts towards disquiet; the malevolent dissipates into innocence.
Contemplating her own questions of memory, faith, impression, and encounter, McCool pictures her subjects with genuine dignity and humour. And it is here that P.North finds its bearings. McCool has spoken about how she found a kind of solace in the awkward intensity and connection of the photographic exchange. By locking gazes with her subjects – flawed and complex as they and we all are – she reveals an endeavour to understand herself.
96 pages, 18.5 x 22.5 cm, section-sewn hardcover, Perimeter Editions (Melbourne).