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The fate of the world's largest island - hangs at the Gallery

"The fate of the world's largest island hangs in the balance…" So begins Trent Parke's introduction to his long-awaited new body of work, ‘Minutes to Midnight’.

By Latrobe City Council - 9th June 2006 - Back to News

The result of a two-year road trip around Australia, this black and white photographic exhibition, currently featuring at the Latrobe Regional gallery, is a bold fusion of documentary traditions and a radical contemporary imagination.

Trent Parke’s journey was inspired by a survey in one of the Sunday newspapers which related that over half the population (approximately 60%) thought that Australia had come to the end of an era and had somehow lost its innocence. Parke felt that this was the right time to take off and find out for himself what Australia was.

He began this extraordinary body of work in 2003 with a growing sense that Australia was changing. Even before Parke set out he felt Australia was a fairly dark and mysterious country.

Parke concedes he was influenced by music and video clips, in particular Midnight Oil. Through their lyrics he got this incredible sense that there was so much going on out there, that there was something wrong, that Australia was heading in a direction that wasn't quite right.

Two years and 90,000 kilometres later, ‘Minutes to Midnight’ is an intense and darkly beautiful vision of Australia - one man's attempt to find his place within a country vastly different from the one in which he grew up.

Arranged around themes and narratives, Parke wants people to be able to come into the exhibition and feel they are really part of his trip. He wants them to have an emotional response.

"Whether they think the pictures are sad or even if they think they are disgusting, I don't really mind. I just want people to feel something. That's all I ever want - that someone is moved," Parke revealed.

Trent Parke is one of the most innovative and exciting photographers around. He is the only Australian photographer in the celebrated Magnum group. Trent won the prestigious W Eugene Smith Award for humanistic photography in 2003 and World Press Photo Awards in 1999 (Bathurst Car Races ), 2000 (The Seventh Wave ) and 2001 (Australian Road Kill series). He has been awarded five Gold Lenses from the International Olympic Committee (1996, 1997 and 1998) and the Canon Photo Essay Prize in the 2000 Sasakawa World Sports Awards. He was also selected in the World Press Photo Masterclass in 1999., and he won America's prestigious W Eugene Smith Award for humanistic photography in 2003.

‘Minutes to midnight’ continues at Latrobe Regional Gallery until 25 June.

Source: www.gippsland.com

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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