PHOTO is a major new biennial international festival of photography that will activate Melbourne and sites across regional Victoria with the most inspiring photography from Australia and around the world.
Bendigo Art Gallery’s exhibition for PHOTO 2020, The Burning World features major works by Australian artists Michael Cook, Rosemary Laing, Hoda Afshar and Peta Clancy. Taking its title from the apocalyptic science fiction text of the same name by JG Ballard, the exhibition interrogates urban and natural landscapes to reveal darker truths about human inhabitations. Addressing the contemporary ramifications of past actions, the works hold confronting realities in tension with idyllic and iconic environments, challenging dominant narratives to focus attention on what has been overlooked, denied or concealed. In particular, they draw upon colonial histories, fact and fiction, to consider the landscape as an amorphous political site.
The inaugural festival, PHOTO 2020, runs from 23 April to 10 May 2020 and is being delivered in collaboration with over 25 cultural institutions, museums, galleries and universities. The theme for PHOTO 2020 invites artists, curators, writers and academics to interrogate the relationship between photography and truth in the post-internet age.