PHOTO 21 | 'Restricted Images': Patrick Waterhouse

Photo Australia supports universal access to diverse, progressive, meaningful discourse to make sense of ourselves and the world around us. It produces Australasia’s largest and most significant photography event. Delivered in collaboration with over 40 cultural institutions, museums, galleries and universities, the Festival features free exhibitions, outdoor displays and artist commissions in Melbourne and across regional Victoria, alongside events and education programs. The biannual celebration of new photography and ideas invites artists, curators, writers, academics and audiences to interrogate the major issues of our time through a central theme. Responding to the theme of ‘The Truth’, PHOTO 2021 explores the veracity of the photographic image in a time of social media, fake news, and artificial intelligence.

For PHOTO 21, Patrick Waterhouse exhibited the series 'Restricted Images', in which Patrick collaborated with the Warlukurlangu Art Centre in Central-Australia. Usually, capturing the Aboriginals in Australia is limited and historical images are often "restricted". However, Waterhouse was granted permission to capture the local inhabitants over the years and returned to the area after making the prints, to work together with local artists and members of the community, so they could restrict and amend his photographs through the process of painting. 

Background: Patrick Waterhouse (b. 1981, England) is an artist who explores the shifting nature of our understanding of the past. Through processes that play with narrative representation, his work sheds light on the construction of history and its origins. Collaboration is integral to Waterhouse’s practice, informing and shaping the trajectory of his projects as the work forms through conversation and engagement with those represented and the communities in which they live. 

Waterhouse’s work has been exhibited internationally in institutions including FotoMuseum, Antwerpen (2019); Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque (2018); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2017); The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao (2016); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C (2015); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2015); The National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2014); Le Bal, Paris (2014); Biennale de Lubumbashi, DR Congo (2013); The International Center of Photography Triennial, New York (2013); Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2012); The Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich (2011) and South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2010). His work is held in major public and private collections including Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Centre Pompidou, Paris; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C and The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany. Awards include the Discovery Award at Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles in 2011 and the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize in 2015 for Ponte City (with Mikhael Subotzky).