Perimeter x Patrick Waterhouse | Melbourne & Sydney Book Launches

Perimeter is thrilled to present the book launch for the major new book by British photographer Patrick Waterhouse, Restricted Images: Made with the Warlpiri of Central Australia (SPBH Editions, London) in Australia. The Melbourne and Sydney launches will include a Q&A between Waterhouse and Otto Sims, an Elder from the Warlpiri. All are welcome!

Restricted Images: Made with the Warlpiri of Central Australia features a remarkable series of works made at the Warlukurlangu Art Centre in collaboration with the Warlpiri of Central Australia, and published by London-based imprint SPBH Editions. The book is the result of a five-year project that saw Waterhouse – who won the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize for his project with Mikhael Subotzky Ponte City – make several visits to the Yuendumu and Nyirrpi Aboriginal communities of the Central Desert and the vast surrounding Warlpiri country, where he worked to not only document the people and their country, but also engaged local artists in a collaboration that saw them process, interpret, expand and ‘restrict’ his images, essentially shifting the gaze in the process.

Waterhouse visited Australia multiple times and spent four years taking photographs in the Yuendumu and Nyirrpi communities surrounding Warlpiri country. After making the prints of the photographs he returned to Central Australia to work with the artists and other members of the wider community so they could 'restrict' and amend the photographs with paint, and give themselves agency over their imagery, so to speak.

Waterhouse’s Restricted Images is a long-term project about agency and representation and also takes a step towards renegotiating the politics of who gets to decide what is seen and what is kept hidden. Waterhouse arrived acknowledging his position as a white European among Aboriginals, and through the collaboration opened a new space for interaction and dialogue. History, oppression and exploitation cannot be reversed, but new relationships and new ways of sharing information can be forged. At its core, Restricted Images is about an artist and a community trying to understand each other.

BOOK LAUNCH DETAILS
ALICE SPRINGS | FRIDAY 7 SEPTEMBER
Artist Talk | Desert Mob Symposium
Araluen Cultural Precinct, 61 Larapinta Dr, Araluen, NT 0870
desart.com.au/desert-mob/

MELBOURNE | WEDNESDAY 12 SEPTEMBER
Book Launch | Q&A between Patrick Waterhouse and Otto Sims
Perimeter Books, 748 High St, Thornbury. 6-8pm.

SYDNEY | THURSDAY 13 SEPTEMBER
Book Launch | Q&A between Patrick Waterhouse and Otto Sims
Artspace, 43-51 Cowper Wharf Road, Woolloomoolo. 6-8pm.
artspace.org.au