Katrin Koenning, an Australian-German artist and a member of this year’s international Festival jury, will present herself with the body of work named “Indefinitely”, in Kranjcar Gallery.
The middle of nowhere is at the centre of everything.
– Rebecca Solnit
Indefinitely is about love and a seemingly infinite space that is, in fact, filled to the rim with all kinds of things. Leaning on Near, a long-term project documenting Koenning’s family who lives in many different corners of the world, Indefinitely is concerned with movement and a space created by relocation, examining the notion that this space is not a vacuum or void, but rather the curator of new narratives. It’s a space of the imaginary, holding everything. Indefinitely is her attempt at navigating distance.
“With the experience of being displaced from a homeland comes a continuous process of re-placement, through transcending traditional physical boundaries and traditional methods of psychological interactions. An anti-linear or disjunctive order emerges from this constant state of interpretation. Imagined borders give way to imagined worlds and newly created homes. Invariably and spontaneously responding to what surrounds and inhabits her when photographing, Koenning’s aesthetic varies, adjusting itself to the environment and the experiences that produce it, never following a formula. Just like a continuous shaft of light full of glimmering dust, constantly fluctuating, and without boundaries, Indefinitely redefines the notion of distance associated with the migratory experience by filling it with the most simple and intense visual poems.” CLAIRE MONNERAYE
Katrin Koenning (born 1978 in Ruhr, Germany) is an Australian-German artist with a particular interest in our physical and emotional connection to place and environment. Koenning’s photographs are regularly exhibited in Australian and international solo and group exhibitions. She is a former editor of the Australian PhotoJournalist Magazine and curatorial adviser for Wallflower Photomedia Gallery, Mildura. She has won numerous awards including the Conscientious Portfolio Competition and the Daylight Photo Award. In July 2016, she published her first book “Astres Noirs”. Koenning currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, where she practices and works as a freelance photographer and lectures photography at Photography Studies College, Melbourne.