Statement
Duncan Wright is a Fremantle based photographer who explore the tropes of iconic Australian culture through a playful and often humorous sensibility. His work interrogates the idea of the Australian dream through pointing the finger at his own middle-class upbringing, portraying the aspirations and absurd everyday realities of Western Australians. With his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Duncan aims to disrupt traditional notions of photography, bringing visceral and lyrical qualities to his images. Duncan works full-time as a freelance photographer and this is seen throughout his works. He recently had a debut solo exhibition ‘Happiness’ at the Perth Centre of Photography and has since been nominated for the highly esteemed Prix Pictet award with his work ‘Smoke In The Sky’ and is also a finalist in this years Print Award at the Fremantle Arts Centre. His work is held in various private collections and his work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.
Walkabout1011emailsflagfinihed?23.jpg, Bong On, Aussie and Masonic Lodge, Cue. (4 Iterations) are experimental pieces by photographic artist Duncan Wright to further his work into deconstructing the identity of the Australian legend. The works use an algorithm, originally developed for commercial image editing and various other manual and computer based techniques to disrupt the images. These works are usually made during periods of procrastination, often in the between periods of commercial shoots, emailing, invoicing and editing jobs. Examining my middle-classness - I’m looking for a way to explore my own sense of identity in a weird modern Australia.
Masonic Lodge, Cue aims to question how the landscape was transformed, by not only mining, but the tin shanty’s and towns that developed along with gold mining and how new religions and beliefs were brought into the area, perhaps presenting a distorted view on Australian identity.
Similarly Walkabout1011emailsflagfinihed?23.jpg and Bong On, Aussie are made of collected, scanned and digitally and manually manipulated Australiana ephemera. The works intend to provide a commentary on identity and land through the distortion and embellishment of Australian iconographies.