Rebecca Dagnall was born in Australia in 1972. As an artist Rebecca’s medium of choice is photography. Her work has been a series of explorations into notions of suburbia and culture, the bush as psychological space, the Australian gothic and the ongoing investigation into peoples’ relationships with their immediate surroundings.
Rebecca’s work has been exhibited widely in Australia and more recently internationally. Exhibitions include solos shows at the Australian Centre for Photography, Monash Gallery of Art, Queensland Centre for Photography and Foto Freo Festival in Australia. Rebecca has been involved in many group shows including; The Lake curated by Malcolm Smith at the Australian Centre for Photography (2009), Transient States curated by Sally Quin at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery (2009), in 2010 her work was part of Imagining the Everyday a group exhibition of Australian photographers curated by Alasdair Foster at the Pingyao International Photography festival in China and Testing Ground in 2013 which is touring nationally from Salamanca Art Centre curated by Julie Gough. Rebecca has shown work at the Lodz photographic festival Poland in 2011 and in France at Gallery Huit.
Rebecca has been a repeat finalist in some prestigious awards such as the William Bowness Photographic Award, the Josephine Ulrich and Win Shubert Photographic award and a semi finalist in the Moran Photographic Award. Rebecca received a Judges commendation award in the City of Joondalup Invitation Art Award 2012 and in 2014 won first prize of $10,000 in the Victoria Park Art Award. Rebecca has work in many public collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia collection and in private collections. Rebecca is currently represented by Turner Galleries in Perth.
In the pictured body of work the idea of spectrality opens up the worlds between the things we can see and the things that we hide. Ghosts are travellers in time, moving through both temporal and spatial borders that separate the past from the present - inviting us to see, through their hauntings, Australia’s colonial deeds of injustice both past and present. The images in this series reveal the ghost. They are a contemporary understanding of an Australian cultural condition that needs to recognise the haunting and speak with its’ ghosts.
Install view with Pioneer Pool, 2015, Archival pigment print, 100 x 150cm. Impenetrable bush, 2016, archival pigment print, 77 x 150cm. Stairway, 2019, Archival pigment print, 80 x 120cm. Mountain memory, 2019, Archival pigment print, 80 x 120cm. Between worlds, 2019, Archival pigment print, 100 x 150cm. Down by the river, 2014, Archival pigment print, 67 x 100cm. Bird, 2019, Archival pigment print, 27 x 40cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Content courtesy of the artist's website.