JUSTINE KHAMARA
Portrait of Justine Khamara, by Ilona Nelson
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JUSTINE KHAMARA lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. In 2003 she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) from the Victorian College of the Arts.
Khamara's practice to date has sought to disrupt photography's smooth, two-dimensional surfaces by building sculptures and collages entirely out of photographs. A flat image, usually figurative, is transformed either by slicing directly into the photographic skin and pulling features into three dimensional form, or by taking multiple shots of a single subject which are then collaged. Often evoking biological processes of replication while also engaging with notions of self-representation in an era of instant, endlessly generative (re)productions technologies, her work is best understood as an existentialist, psychological response to contemporary notions of being.
Solo exhibitions include: Reconstructure (2013) & Now I am a radiant people (2011), Arc One Gallery; Erysichthon’s Ball, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2010); How Excellently We Did-diddly-do-do Do It, Heide Museum of Modern Art (2007); Legion, tcb art inc., Melbourne (2005); Bugaboo!, tcb art inc, Melbourne (2004); Eye Spy... Linden St.Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne (2003).
Group exhibitions include: Northern Lights, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre (2013); Contemporary Australia: Women, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012); Double Vision, McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park, Langwarrin (2011); Present Tense: An imagined grammar of portraiture in the digital age, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra (2010); The Edge of the Universe, Shepparton Art Gallery, Victoria (2010); New 09, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2009); Primavera 07, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2007); Six Orbits Around the Blue Moon, Ramp Gallery, Massey University, Hamilton, NZ (2005); Figures of Question, Ord Minnett Foyer Gallery, Melbourne (2005); Hatched 03, Healthway National Graduate Show, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (2003).
Between 2006-2007, Khamara was a committee member at Westspace. Her writing has been published in Artlink Magazine as well as online journals including Melbourne's Un Magazine and New Zealand based Naturalselection. In 2008, she was the recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts New Work grant for emerging artists.
Visit Justine Khamara's website.