A L E X G A W R O N S K I

Alex Gawronski: The Three Phases, 2014

Fisher Library levels 2, 3, 4, the University of Sydney

(Digital prints on cotton rage mounted on gaterboard)

installation shots and details. Photos: Michael Goldberg

The Three Phases was a series of fifty-five, predominantly colour, photographs mounted on gaterboard. These photos were edited down from hundreds of related others. All were taken around various Sydney University campuses especially at Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) and Fisher Library my two workplaces of many years. The photographic series also included reframed images of otherwise random pages within books discovered both as a result of my work as a library technician and as a frequent user of the library.

Each cabinet was arranged according to a particular book title which suggested a theme. These constituted the ‘three phases’ of the work’s overarching title; Phase One – The Construction of Reality; Phase Two – The Art Crisis; Phase Three – Archaeology as a Political Practice. This combination spoke of a certain anxiety regarding the ‘truth’ of photographic images in our digital age. At the same time it also indicated possibilities for the constant, quasi-filmic, recombination of imagery that digital technology allows.

Overall, the images amassed for The Three Phases were arranged to imply an open poetic narrative relative to the theme of each cabinet. Their arrangement over three descending floors of the university library also hinted at the spatial dimension of photographs as a collective archive to be mined in ever-differing re-combinative ways.