Act of looking

Making Strange

Making Strange is a snapshot of images captured when the selfie function on a mobile phone is turned away from the self and is directed at the world around us. 

The familiar becomes strange, when this popular and often narcissistic mode of photography is upended, and draws attention to the overlooked qualities of things and places and relationship between them. 

Bypassing two photographic brags, the high-tech, architectural hero shot devoid of people, and the low fi selfie that puts humans and places at the centre, this exhibition defamiliarises the built environment. 

Ignoring big technologies, drone shots and conventions such as scale, dimensionality, perspective and context, these images of interior and exterior spaces, and the details of surfaces aim to slow things down. 

Making Strange invites an engagement with these structures and their material qualities as they are perceived by the selfie-lens, and not as they are known.

Five Walls Project Space, April 2024

Material Fix: Pipemakers Park

side view copy 72
closeup - 1 72
closeup 72- 2 copy

Material Fix repairs, rather than replicates or restores, the broken bench seating around the concrete picnic tables made by the workers from the now defunct Hume pipe company. Instead crystal clear round resin forms have been installed on the concrete stands.

Making use of the visual and conceptual impact of contrasting materials, the translucent discs appear to suck in and reflect the surrounding park. Material Fix draws attention to the park’s industrial past and serves as a spectral reminder of the workers who made and enjoyed regular picnics after work.

Hidden Life: Last Days

hooks half - 72
lampshade- 72
hall ceiling 72
5 dinning room light - 72
9 white wall - 72
8 stairs 72
green room ceiling - 72
front room ceiling 72
hall and bowl - 72

Last Days captured the hidden life of objects and the places they inhabit in the final days of Brooklyn Art Hotel.  Part home, part hotel for many who have visited Melbourne since 2006, this series of photos asked the question —  if an object could take a selfie what would it look like? Shot on a mobile phone these images are a last farewell and bring into view the overlooked relationships between spaces and things before Brooklyn is emptied and handed over to a new owner.

Last Days was part of an art event Supernaculum: to the last drop, curated by Aphrodite Feros-Fooke and Tom Shepherd-Barron, March 2020.

Hidden Life: A Domestic study

wall 2
red vase 2000
pile big 2000
breach 2000
under the stairs 2000
edie ceiling - 1
sniper a4
Cos light
pointy and brush copy
pointy 2
stick plant 2 light 2000
render wall 2000
brush 2000
wooly bush
doorbell 2000
robin's vase
edie stair
bathroom mirror 2000
602 - julie
titles shot

Hidden Life, A Domestic Study turns the selfie function on a mobile phone away from the self in order to see what it can reveal about the world of objects and the spaces they inhabit. The familiar becomes strange when this popular and generally narcissistic mode of photography is subverted. Shot from below, the photographs defamiliarize the ordinary and draw attention to the overlooked relationship between things and the places they inhabit.

The images in this exhibition centre on the domestic environment and were mainly shot in the artists’ home. They form part of a larger Hidden Life series, which also draws on house museums and commercial spaces. This body of work — like all of Julie Shiels’ photographic and sculptural projects — encourages us to look more carefully at the world around us — especially the things that are hidden in plain sight.

Linden New Art -October 3, 2019 – November 3, 2019

Empty

west family court landscape
west empty 3 cropped
west 5 - 72
reno day - ATR - 72
east- morning 72
break out 72
east 1- square 72
BLURR - 72
ATR 7 - 72
across the road 1 72
orange couch corrected 72
kitchen west - 72

Exhibition and photo book

Empty is a collection of photographs taken from Shiels’ home on the 20th floor in Melbourne’s CBD. The works capture the stillness and other worldliness of these workplaces when the humans have left the room. The absence of human presence amplifies activities occurring behind the glass facades, turning the focus onto the furniture, tools, technology and personal paraphernalia that populate these spaces.  Inviting a reflection on  the unseen spaces in a city, Empty seeks to remind us that things continue to exist even when they slip from view.

Atrium Gallery: Sofitel Hotel, Melbourne. December 2018 – February 2019

The photo book  Empty, was published by M.33, Melbourne.  Essay by Julie Ewington. 

©2024 Julie Shiels