Matthew Sleeth, Southern Lights, Shinjinku Southern Terrace, (Tokyo) , 2006, C type photograph. UTS Art Collection, gift of Patrick Corrigan AM, 2011
Visitors to level 5 of the Tower building at UTS may have noticed some new artworks on the walls this semester. The UTS Art Collection is regularly rotated in public spaces on campus – alongside the existing display of contemporary photography and painting by indigenous artists, a fresh selection of artworks from the Collection includes some of our most recent additions.
Two young women sit alone on either side of a cafe, both engrossed in their phones. A woman makes a solo descent on a subway escalator. A maze of buildings, roads and city lights extend to the horizon, as far as the eye can see. A couple sit on a rocky outcrop, dwarfed by the immensity of the coastal wilderness that surrounds them. Four different scenes captured by one photographer, and each a meditation on light and shade, tourism and urbanisation.
Four photographs by Australian photographer Matthew Sleeth have been newly acquired by the UTS Art Collection, courtesy of donor and legendary benefactor Patrick Corrigan, AM.
Sleeth’s photographs are seductively beautiful and disarmingly immediate, like snapshots taken on a trip abroad. And yet there is something else at play here, the reflexive eye of the artist. “I want my photography to depart from the traditions of orthodox documentary,” Sleeth explained at a recent exhibition of his work at in New York. ”I want to engage with my times – to make pictures that grapple with social and political ideas.”
Photographs by Matthew Sleeth and Bill Henson have been placed with works by Ian Howard, Sue Pedley, and French photographers Romain Meffre & Yves Marchant from their ‘Ruins of Detroit’ series.
They have joined the existing display of paintings by Sali Gabori and photographs by Brook Andrew, Christian Thompson, Destiny Deacon and Tracey Moffatt.
