Wednesday 16 October 2019

 

‘The 14th edition of the Bowness Photography Prize captures the zeitgeist of contemporary Australian photography as a reflection of the broader social and political environment within which we all live.
Katrin’s work speaks with quiet restraint about an issue that will define our generation – the loss of our landscape and the destruction of our planet. It is a powerful reflection on an intense event that left our bush in cinders and took a horrific toll on communities with the loss of so many loved ones. The 2009 Black Saturday bushfires left an indelible mark on Victorians and its memory is a stark reminder of the frailty of our communities and the environment, and our susceptibility to extreme weather events as our climate changes. We are delighted that this work will join MGA’s permanent collection.’
— Anouska Phizacklea, MGA Director

‘This year’s Bowness Photography Prize was highly competitive with a vast array of high quality entries. After a prolonged debate about the works we were delighted to announce Katrin Koenning as the winner of the Bowness Photography Prize with her haunting and compelling triptych work from the series Lake Mountain.
The triptych is a poignant and timely work that fits into a larger conversation about the transience and fragility of the vulnerable nature of the Australian landscape. It is a quiet and considered work that speaks to the seductive and ethereal nature of Koenning’s oeuvre. It lingers and stays with you, it not only presents the reality of the issues we are dealing with but contextualises and invites enquiry.’
— Dr Christian Thompson AO

‘Katrin Koenning’s triptych Lake Mountain is an understated but deeply affecting image whose appearance could hardly be more timely. As parts of the country burn with unseasonal regularity and intensity, Koenning reminds us of the lasting damage to the landscape when bushfires reach such a level of ferocity that forest canopies explode and trees irredeemably blacken and die, struggling to regenerate long after the fire’s passing. In a moving lament for this loss, Koenning takes us close into the forest floor of this otherwise beautiful Victorian Alpine region, where a relatively young stand of trees are still, a decade on from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, all but bereft of living foliage. Even the undergrowth seems unable to right itself under the weight of what appears to be a light dusting of snow (albeit it feels, in this context, more reminiscent of ash). Bushfires, at the level in which we are increasingly experiencing them, can and do create their own kind of endless winter. Koenning’s eloquent requiem for Lake Mountain is a remarkably composed and restrained but still urgent and insistent cri de coeur. It asks us to reflect on the terms of our coexistence with nature, and their sustainability, in an age of environmental crisis.’
— Chris Saines, Director of Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art



Tuesday 17 September 2019

 
Situated in the documentary tradition, Katrin Koenning’s intimate photographs and sequences are made of the quotidian. Spaces clash, collide and come to be. Her fused geographies suggest a present that is puzzle-esque and multiplicit; always in conversation. With this, Koenning offers a way of seeing that is non-hierarchical, refusing to comply with a human-centric order of things. Instead the greater living world, the human and the animal occupy an equal space—connected rather than apart. In careful image-dialogues, she explores extended narrative possibilities and the currencies of the document. Through multilingual approaches to image-making Katrin seeks to reflect the complex times in which we live; imbuing her poetics experience both injury and tenderness.


Friday 13 September 2019

Art Guide, Sept-Oct 2019



Sunday 1 September 2019

Thursday 25 July 2019

Commission, news coming soon. Kolkata, West Bangla, India July 2019.


WIP from residency, Kolkata West Bengal, July 2019. 



Thursday 23 May 2019

Install View, Peckham 24 / For those who could see beyond the Surface

 

Tuesday 14 May 2019

Placing focus on their immediate surroundings, these six artists explore themes of history, ritual, and the strangeness of the everyday, navigating the world through photography, sculpture, film and sound.  As the very idea of community becomes ever more fluid and complex, these projects seek to engage in a deeper understanding of our place within it.


Saturday 27 April 2019

Thursday 11 April 2019

Friday 1 February 2019


Work in progress


Thursday 31 January 2019

                                                           Pott in Analogue Magazine