Greg Elms’ latest exhibition, 'Preserved', stems from a childhood spent in a suburban hotel with a public bar adorned in taxidermy hunting trophies.
“Preserved is, in some respects a re-imagining of this memory, but it’s also a gothic investigation of our relationship with animals, and the way photographs manipulate our sense of the real and the imaginary,” says Elms.
The exhibition, at Edmund Pearce Gallery from November 7 to 24, explores our primal emotional responses when in close proximity to animals and insects. But it also explores what truth means in photography – is a contrived photograph still real? Doesn’t photography always render the real as contrived? Elms seeks to highlight these questions with the further contrivance of taxidermy.
Curator Simon Gregg states the work “erects an invisible barrier between us and the animals; a physical barrier but in many ways and with more consequence to us, a psychological barrier.”
Greg Elms has a degree in photography from RMIT, and is a VCA Fine Art Post-Graduate. He has a 20-year history of exhibiting and his output has ranged from photograms, painted photographs, photo realist painting, and most recently, lens-less photography. Preserved is his fourth solo exhibition.
Where: Edmund Pearce Gallery
37 Swanston Street (cnr Flinders Lane)
Melbourne Victoria 3000
When: 7-24 November, 2012
Wed-Sat 11am-5pm
Photo by Greg Elms from the exhibition, Preserved.