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This is a free drop-in event. Bookings are not required, but capacity is limited.
Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.
Duration: 45 mins including Q&A
‘When our boys were young, we read to them every night. I was particularly drawn to Dr Seuss, Brothers Grim, and the dark fairy tales. The Christmas tree bucket in a sense became my dark Christmas tale.’
Trent Parke
Join artists Trent Parke and Narelle Autio for a talk about their exhibition The Christmas tree bucket.
Parke and Autio will share insights into their long-standing practices, sometimes working alongside each other and other times collaboratively. They will discuss The Christmas tree bucket 2006-09, a portrait of suburban Australian Christmas, reflecting on its origins in their own lives, their sons Jem and Dash, their extended families, and its exploration of ritual, chaos and humour. The talk will consider how photography can both document and transform the everyday, revealing contradictions and poetry within domestic life.
Trent Parke was born and raised in Mulubinba/Newcastle, New South Wales. He started taking pictures at age 12, using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic and the family laundry as a darkroom. He began his career as a press photojournalist and, in 2007, became the first Australian to become a full member of Magnum Photos.
Parke is one of the most innovative photographers of his generation. He is known for his poetic, often darkly humorous photography, which offers an emotional and psychological portrait of his home country of Australia — from the southern outback to its busy beaches. His work sits between fiction and reality, exploring themes of identity, place and family life.
Narelle Autio was born and raised in Tarntanya/Adelaide and is one of Australia’s most distinctive contemporary photographers, known for her explorations of landscape, leisure and family life through richly coloured, immersive images. She has won two Walkley Awards for photojournalism, two first prize World Press Photo awards, an American Picture of the Year award and in 2002, she became the first Australian to win the major Leica Oskar Barnack Award and her work has been shown nationally and internationally. The seventh wave, a collaboration with Parke, was Autio’s first exhibition in 2000 and Autio’s practice has been characterised particularly by an enduring fascination with Australia’s shoreline and our relationship to the sea and with water.
The Christmas tree bucket is a series of photographs Parke made between 2006 and 2009 as a study of suburbia through the lens of his extended family. It is both darkly humorous and tender. The series showcases his highly acclaimed aesthetic, remarkable for its distinctive manipulation of light and colour.
Moving away from his earlier black-and-white work, Parke embraced colour to make this portrait of family life. The images, made using flash, are sharp and saturated, capturing the chaos, rituals and contradictions of the suburban Australian Christmas. At once candid, unsettling, affectionate and absurd, the photographs balance intimacy with theatricality—drawing on the legacy of postwar American photography while maintaining a personal visual language that transforms the everyday.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Parkes Place East, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory 2600
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