MENU

Claire Conroy

The City of Ladies | 2017

2. Claire Conroy, The City of Ladies.  2017 photo Alex Wisser
2. Claire Conroy, The City of Ladies. 2017 photo Alex Wisser

bio:

Conroy’s works have been collected by the NSW State Library, the National Gallery of Australia, the Powerhouse Museum and in private collections across Australia. She currently holds an MFA from Sydney College of the Arts where she now teaches photography. She also teaches photography at the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts.

"The City of Ladies" 2017

A camera obscura caravan is situated within an allegorical city in a paddock in Kandos. It is broadly based on The Book of the City of Ladies, a 15thcentury feminist text by Christine de Pizan. The City of Ladies can be moved through, inhabited as well as viewed upside down and in reverse from inside the camera obscura.

statement:

Claire Conroy is an Australian artist using unique photographic techniques to create evocative, contemporary images and installations. In an era when most photography is taking place in the digital realm, Conroy’s work involves the use of centuries-old analogue photographic processes, such as the camera obscura and pinhole photography. She constructs her own pinhole cameras and darkrooms from found objects, including a 1950s caravan, a water tank and a three-tonne truck. She uses these to explore shadowy reversals, inversions and obscurities that question representation and perception of the familiar within the Australian landscape, particularly 21st-century anxieties about environment and place.

Materials | Camera obscura caravan and installation.
Location | Paul’s Paddock
1. Claire Conroy, The City of Ladies.  2017 photo Alex Wisser
1. Claire Conroy, The City of Ladies. 2017 photo Alex Wisser