"It is into the darkness that we project our deepest fears, and out of the darkness that our fears find us..."
"In the dead of night, somewhere off the beaten track in the eerie Australian landscape, a sudden sense of isolation, of estrangement from the familiar, may wrench you from peace and solace and abandon you to the uneasy lure of your darkest imaginings.
This series is an exploration of how the Australian Gothic haunts our response to the Australian landscape drawing on contemporary and familiar imagery of the Australian bush, of dingoes stealing babes and travellers murdered. Through creating a menacing visual narrative I explore how removing ourselves from our known surroundings can leave us in metaphorical as well as physical darkness."
Artist statement, 2014
It is hard to view Rebecca Dagnall's unsettling photographs without recalling the plethora of Australian horror films that have helped portray our bushlands and desert at night as anxious terrains. They are diametrically opposed to the populist views of Australia as sun-drenched beaches scattered with sunbathers and brightly patterned towels. Rebecca's images from In Tenebris reveal the bush and deserted campsites at night. Objects are spot-lit, as though temporarily caught in a torch beam; red bathers cling to a rock, a baby blanket and a doll are discarded in a clearing, a roll of toilet paper unfurls from a tree, a discarded picnic with a spilt glass of wine graces a boulder. These works also question our role: viewer or voyeur?
Rebecca is a current PHD candidate at RMIT and a lecturer at Curtin University, Perth. She studied at Curtin University, graduating in 2003 with Honours. She held her first solo exhibition at Turner Galleries in 2009 and since then has been invited to show around Australia and internationally, including the touring exhibition Testing Ground, curated by Julie Gough in 2013, Southbank at Horsham Gallery in Victoria, and a major exhibition of Western Australian photography held at the University of WA's Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery titled Transient States in 2009. She has shown during the Arles Photographic Festival in France, the Lodz Fotfestiwal in Poland, and the Pingyao Photographic Festival in China. In late 2011 she held major solo exhibitions at the Queensland Centre for Photography and the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney. Her work can be found in several collections, including the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
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