Perimeter x Nishi Gallery, Canberra

Perimeter is thrilled to be hosting a One-Day Bookshop at Nishi Gallery, Canberra, on Saturday, December 1, 2018. Featuring a range of key titles from our stable of European, US and Australian publishers – including MACK (London), Spector Books (Liepzig), Libraryman (Antwerp), Roma Publications (Amsterdam) and Perimeter Editions (Melbourne) – the event coincides with Melbourne photographer Sarah Walker’s exhibition, Second Sight, presented in celebration of the launch of her book of the same name, which was the inaugural winner of the 2018 Perimeter Small Book Prize. Alongside the bookshop, the day will feature an informal publication launch and artist talk.

Taking its bearings from the adage that seeing is believing, the debut book from young Melbourne photographer Sarah Walker, Second Sight, assumes a cynical vantage on our collective relationship with spirituality, faith, ritual and the search for meaning. Using the trickery of photography, Walker reframes and appropriates fragments of the everyday to imbue them with the loaded atmosphere of the ephemeral and the arcane. The resulting body of work proves as speculative and enigmatic as it is arresting and dynamic – a space where the image of refracted light, moving water or birds in flight becomes a foil for arcing bodily gestures, clasped hands, arrangements of rocks and abstracted, deconstructed portraiture. Here, we find ourselves enmeshed in the artifice of this fraught search for meaning, where each and every instance becomes a potential sign.

“Photography itself is ritualistic and performative, and at times requires repetitive action to achieve its intended results,” writes the artist. “It has a creator.” As such, Walker posits her photographic practice to operate in a kind of unlikely parallel to that of spiritual practices. “Similar to those who project meaning onto refracted light, this body of work re-contextualises and uses the connection between images to depict a new grasp on reality. My own spiritual space.”

Sarah Walker (b. 1991) is a photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. Her work includes the use of found imagery, video and sculptural works. She is interested in using photography to deconstruct reality and examine ideas relating to the human condition. Walker’s work has featured in various publications including Der Greif Guest-Room curated by Jörg Colberg, Phases Magazine, The Heavy Collective, The Latent Image, Terra Firma and the book A Place Both Wonderful and Strange (Fuego Books, Murcia). She has exhibited in Australia and abroad.

EVENT DETAILS
Nishi Gallery, 17 Kendall Lane, Canberra, ACT, Ngunnawal Country
Saturday, December 1, 2018
11am – 5pm
Book Launch and Artist Talk from 2pm
Event is free; RSVP for talk on Eventbrite