Sydney-based photographer Carine Thevenau's new exhibition, For the Nautilus is My Boat, showing at the Edmund Pearce Gallery in Melbourne, draws inspiration from the poem and illustration of the same name by Warwick Gobles, who famously illustrated The Water Babies, a popular English children's book that was first published in 1863.
Drawing inspiration from a time when fossils, shells and tortoises were regular heroes on the pages of fiction, Thevenau says her new series is essentially about, "the human desire to better understand ourselves through the wisdom of nature."
The exhibition juxtaposes elaborate and beautifully-lit still life images with a series of highly stylised portraits, connected by their use of natural elements from the still lifes including flowers, shells and fossils.
Thevenau's photography has been published in Wallpaper, Rolling Stone, ID magazine, Vogue, Smith Journal and she is a senior photographer at Frankie magazine. She has been a finalist in the International Iris Portrait Photographic Award for two consecutive years. Her work has been exhibited at the Los Angeles Centre of Digital Art, Perth Centre Of Photography and has forthcoming works showing at Galerie Pavlova, Berlin, Germany.
For the Nautilis is my Boat, is on at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne from 1-25 October 2014. The Edmund Pearce Gallery is located at 37 Swantston Street, Melbourne, Victoria.
