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ARTIST STATEMENT
Mike Gray is an Australian artist who has exhibited nationally and internationally since 2003. Through predominately photographic and interdisciplinary lens-based works he examines dominant Western narratives that specifically intersect both Australian and personal concerns. Some of the themes explored include applied machismo, uncanny suburbia, preconscious vision, the nature–culture divide, and the experience of the partially naturalised migrant.
Primarily through experimentation he produces bodies of work whereby the technique and aesthetic produced intersect the concepts explored. In photographic terms this experimentation is informed by devolved photographic analogue processes through to high-end digital technology. Subsequently his work aims to form alternate narratives and construct new insights into aspects of post-colonialism, visual phenomena, identity and modernist histories.
Education
2016 Doctor of Philosophy. Edith Cowan University.
2009 Bachelor of Creative Industries, Hons. (First Class). Edith Cowan University.
2002 Bachelor of Communications, Photomedia. Edith Cowan University.
1992 Diploma of Applied Science in Photography. Perth Central TAFE.
Current employment
2014 Lecturer (Photography) / Curtin University, Perth Western Australia
Solo exhibitions
2016 New Australian Plants and Animals – Gallery 25, Perth, AUS.
2016 Corrupt – Perth Centre for Photography, AUS.
2014 New Australian Plants and Animals – Perth Centre for Photography, AUS.
2014 New Australian Plants and Animals – Singapore National Museum, Singapore.
2011 Macho Confessions – Turner Galleries, Perth, AUS.
2010 China Diptychs – ESP Gallery – Sydney Fringe Festival, Sydney, AUS.
2009 Be a Hero! – Kaunas Photo Festival, Kaunas, Lithuania.
2008 Australian Edition, Kaunas Foto Festival, Kaunas, Lithuania.
2008 Assorted – Perth Centre of Photography, AUS.
2005 2nd Ave – Perth Institute of contemporary Art, Perth, AUS.
Selected group exhibitions
2023 Speculative Horizons – Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait
2022 Collective – Perth Centre for Photography, Perth, AUS
2021 Meet the Pattis – Perth Centre for Photography, AUS
2020 The Image Looks Back – PHOTO2020 / RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Aus.
2019 Diverse Stills – Art Collective, Perth, Aus.
2018 WAu! – Korundi Art Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland.
2017 Psychogeography – Gallery Central, Perth, AUS.
2015 The Alchemists – Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, AUS.
2015 Phenomoflex Installation – Perth Fringe Festival, AUS.
2014 View from the Window – Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, AUS.
2014 Of Spears and Pruning Hooks – Spectrum Gallery, Perth, AUS.
2013 The Abandoned Boudoir – Nhow, Milan, Italy.
2013 Becoming – USST, Shanghai, China.
2013 Momentum– Perth Centre for Photography, Perth, AUS
2012 Sixth Sense – Foto Freo Gallery Central, Perth, AUS
2011 China Diptychs – Valparaiso International Festival of Photography, Chile.
2011 Beautiful South – 8th Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
2010 8 Days – Perth Centre of Photography, Perth, AUS.
2009 Transient States – Pingyao International Photo Festival, China.
2009 Transient States – Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Perth, AUS.
2009 Yellow Vest Syndrome – Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth, AUS.
2008 Hijacked – group exhibition, Berlin (Neunplus), New York (The Arm), Sydney (Australian Centre for Photography).
2008 Dr Daryl Hewson Collection – QUT Art Museum, Brisbane, AUS.
2007 Squat – Spectrum Art Space, Perth, AUS.
2007 Undeclared Customs – The Pikture Gallery, Bangkok, Thailand.
2006 Man/Trouble – Downtown Art Space, Adelaide, AUS.
2004 Ladies and Gentlemen – QCP, Brisbane, AUS.
2004 FotoFreo Fringe – Little Creatures Brewery, Perth, AUS.
2004 Surface Tension – Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, AUS.
Selected award exhibitions
2022 Headon Photo Awards – finalist – Sydney, AUS
2021 Headon Photo Awards – finalist – Sydney, AUS
2019 Iris Award – finalist – Perth Centre for Photography, Perth, AUS
2018 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Award – finalist, HOTA Gallery, QLD, AUS.
2018 Fremantle Print Award – finalist, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA, AUS.
2017 Olive Cotton Portrait Award – finalist, Tweed Gallery, NSW, AUS.
2016 Bowness Photography Prize – finalist, MGA, Melbourne, AUS.
2016 CLIP (contemporary landscapes in photography) Award, winning entry, Perth Centre for Photography, AUS.
2016 Prix Pictet Award nominee (New Australian Plants and Animals).
2016 Prix Pictet Award nominee (Corrupt).
2015 City of Joondalup Invitational Art Prize – finalist (winning entry – celebrating Joondalup prize), Joondalup, AUS.
2014 Bowness Photography Prize – finalist, MGA, Melbourne, AUS.
2013 City of Joondalup Invitational Art Prize – finalist, Joondalup, AUS.
2012 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Award – finalist, HOTA Gallery, QLD, AUS.
2011 City of Joondalup Invitational Art Award – finalist, Perth, AUS.
2011 City of Swan Art Award – finalist (winning entry – best print), Perth, AUS.
2010 City of Joondalup Invitational Art Award – finalist, Perth, AUS.
2008 Kaunas Photo Festival 08 – Grand Prix – finalist, Kaunas Lithuania.
2004 City of Perth Photomedia Awards Finalists – finalist, PICA, Perth, AUS.
Bibliography
2014 A view from the window, The Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 2nd July.
2014 What it means to be sincere, The West Australian Newspaper, Sat 22nd November.
2010 Around the world on film, The West Australian Newspaper, Fri 13th August.
2009 Fleeting Visions, The West Australian Newspaper, Fri 13th May.
2009 Customs Ignored, Australian and Lithuanian Photographers
2008 Australian Photography, IQ magazine (Lithuania), N. 5 (4).
2008 Hijacked, Volume 1, Australian and American Photographers
2008 Mirror to the Deluded Male, The West Australian Newspaper, Fri 29th February.
2007 Around the world with 80 photographers, Zeit Leben Magazine (The Times, Germany).
2007 Mike Gray, Curve Magazine, Summer.
2005 Coalesance of Menace and Beauty, The West Australian Newspaper, Fri 14th May.
2005 Mike Gray, Box Magazine, Autumn.
2005 Undeclared Customs, book from the exhibition.
2004 What About Me? The Sydney Morning Herald, Thurs 6th February.
2004 Satire, laugh til’ it hurts, Photofile Issue #72 , Cover and Feature.
2004 ‘ Surface Tension’, Sunday Arts, ABC television.
Publications
Gray, M.R. 2023. Preconscious Ocular Aesthetics: Returning to a Fictitious Point in Photography’s History. The International Journal of the Image 14 (2): 63-79. doi:10.18848/2154-8560/CGP/v14i02/63-79.
Gray, M.R. 2014. The unknown eye: Physiology, phenomenology and photography’. In V.Garnons-Williams (Ed) Photography and Fictions: locating dynamics of practice. Queensland Centre for Photography (QCP), Brisbane. pp. 96-103. ISBN: 978-0-9923225-3-3
Gray, M.R. 2014. Corrupt, Photomediations. http://photomediationsmachine.net/2014/07/31/corrupt/
Gray, M.R. 2016. Finlandisation. [Exhibition catalogue essay]. Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA.
Collections
Royal Perth Hospital, St John of God Hospital, City of Stirling, and numerous private collections including the Kerry Stokes and Dr Darryl Hewson collections
Commissions
2012 Albert Facey House – Perth, W.A.
2016 Aloft Hotel – Perth, W.A.
SERIES STATEMENTS
Corrupt
This process involves editing the image in a text-based editor where the image is represented by indecipherable code. Subsequently, parts of the code are exchanged with popular culture references and personal confessions. When the digital files are re-opened as images the corruption manifests itself in unpredictable ways. Ironically there is an element of chance in this process that is not dissimilar to the entropic systems found in nature.
The pixels that were previously camouflaged in plain sight as a representation of nature are re-arranged; consequently they can no longer maintain their representa- tional link to the natural world and retreat back towards representing technology. In this light these images truly are man-altered landscapes.
In some respects, the images bring the abject (code) to the same level as the sub- lime (nature), the grotesque next to the picturesque. In a world that has mainly gone beyond questioning the effects of technology and globalization, many societies are unable to contemplate returning to a close relationship with natural systems as the space between them has grown too far. This series represents that space.
New Australian Plants and Animals
‘New Australian Plants and Animals’ investigates indeterminate aspects of human vision and postcolonial conditioning. In this series, non-indigenous Australians are metaphorically compared to introduced plants in Australia that are found to go beyond adaptation and inexplicably evolve into new species. There is something about Oz that profoundly, yet imperceptibly, exerts itself on introduced species which inturn separates them from their ancestry.
To promote the sense of the ‘indeterminate’ between the physical self and the phys- ical world, the photographic process approaches the unknown space inside the human eye. The eye experiences the world in a vastly different way to how we con- sciously perceive it and that fundamental aesthetic is unknown to us. In this regard, the works can be seen to approach preconscious visual phenomena through the use of primitive photographic lens technology.
The images in this series were produced with a custom-made camera that employs a single lens borrowed from a pair of reading glasses to focus the image. The image is then recorded on a large, 16”x20” analogue negative. This process is a devolution in photographic technology; going back in time to a fictitious point in history where the recording media was far more sophisticated than the lens technology. Through this process a potentially new photographic aesthetic is arrived at: one that produces an ocular aesthetic and a three-dimensional effect; when viewed large-scale there is a pronounced sense of depth.
Macho Confessions I and II
The initial series was created during the early onset of digital technology and relied heavily on compositing processes within Photoshop. Now with the rise of generative AI a subsequent chapter is possible.
The work contains both social and personal references applied to self portraits. It is based on mass mediated images of ‘macho’ behaviour I watched as a child in the 1970’s as well as personal role models. I try to apply this iconography to situations in either my personal life or social surroundings. This process relies on the over use of macho imagery in society as the basis for satire.
By parodying common male archetypes I am sometimes confessing to parts of my own life where a macho response was the only thing left in the bank. I am not trying to denounce macho behaviour; just trying to make light of the more difficult subjects I’m interested in. These subjects include a mix of post ‘politically correct male’ commentary, social concerns, aspects of my own life and relationships. Through a macho lens I’m trying to make sense of my surroundings and behaviour. Even though this behaviour is presented as humour, there is an element of personal confession and a belief that too much “Macho” is the same as not enough.
Uncanny Valley
This work ironically re-presents certain homes as unhomely. The image’s unique aesthetic is produced by a single plastic single lens borrowed from a toy telescope in conjunction with a high-end digital camera. The results were surreal due to the combination of two factors: firstly, the street-lighting of suburban landscapes transforms the scenes into dramatic film sets, and secondly, the plastic single element lens distorted the scene in ways that reduced the scale of houses to miniature models.
For me, these ‘dream houses’ produced anxieties, the origins of which are hard to pin down. There are possible planning and environmental criticisms that could be levelled at McMansions, but these aren’t the source of my apprehension. There is a visceral reaction that tells me something doesn’t belong, but I don’t know if it’s the McMansion, me, or both.
Unsettled Projections
Non-indigenous Australians of multiple generations form a population that have lost all maternal links to an ‘old country’ but still hasn’t reconciled itself to the actual land/space of Oz and the sense it doesn’t provide Non-indigenous Australians with the European concept of ‘motherland’. Whilst both our rural mythology and urban aesthetic have been acknowledged and realised, these narratives suggest ‘Australia belongs to us’ but not ‘we belong to Australia’.
We’re not indigenous or diaspora, we’re in limbo, held in stasis by myth, historic fantasy and pleasure pursuits. Estranged from the mother/land there is a deep cultural psychology that has yet to be understood. For me, there’s a feeling that we’re homesick but unlike recent migrants, we have no true memory of home. Orphaned long ago by empire and industrialisation we are floating, and like Dylan says, there is ‘no direction home’.
This particular work was achieved by using an improvised field projectors. Using these, I was able to either photograph individual words and objects, projected onto landscape/s or paint directly onto a scene where the words fell. The resulting images, either individually or sequenced into an array, point to what has been described as ‘the melancholy of colonisation’.
AI Art and Photography
“I am burning with desire to see your experiments..”
Louis Daguerre to Nicéphore Niépce regarding the invention of the photographic process, 1828
Nearly 200 years later generative AI is offering the same ‘desire’. Applying Batchen’s (1999) question regarding photography: will generative AI have its own nature or is it a subsection of the culture that surrounds it?
What generative AI will tell us about culture, who and how it will exploit, and it’s effect on photographic truth and history are the questions to be answered.
These are some initial generative AI studies. Some of these examples have been interpolated and upscaled so they produce 100cm+ high resolution prints.