Pete Volich – Bio

Pete Volich's work constructs and disrupts suburban forms and narrative structures, humorously playing with meaning and interpretation of the photographic document. A multi-disciplinary artist working across a range of media including photography, performance and video, Volich has especially concentrated on themes surrounding Memento Mori, Vernacular photography and manipulating traditional forms of photography within an installation environment. Volich's anecdotal titles are as significant as the visual content they allude to, simultaneously staging an entrance into the work whilst confounding its reading.

Volich's series 2012: E9E10, 2008 is a psycho-geographical portrait of Hackney Marsh in London, and was developed while participating in a mentorship scheme with internationally acclaimed film and video artist Isaac Julien. Using photos and video, Volich has documented the underbelly of the marsh over ten months, before it is consumed by the economic and social redevelopment of the Olympic spectacle. Volich has made subtle intrusions into the landscape, using found detritus to construct poetic vignettes as if pre-mourning the social and cultural capital of the marsh before it disappears. Volich was selected as a finalist in the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship 2008, presenting 2012:E9E10 in the exhibition at Artspace, Sydney.

The re-envisioning of detritus left behind in the quest for heroics is reminiscent of his series Tales from the rear view mirror...here we go again 2006, exhibited in Stills Gallery in 2007. Here Volich combines sports clothing and equipment with found photographs to create framed memorabilia that merge the real with the fictional. The ambiguous titles describe situations and memories that disjointedly play out across the visual signifiers and leave us trying to make sense of implied (sporting) scenarios. This series was selected as finalist work in the Helen Lempriere International Traveling Arts scholarship, Artspace 2006.

The disruption of meaning in the title for Volich's body of work, Thoughts from the nap in an afternoon couch 2006, parallels the chaotic images of piles of clothes strewn over various armchairs. At first these images appear as documentary photographs; the intimate view into someone else's mess, their crumpled wardrobe. However, it becomes apparent that the disorder is instead a careful and subtle assemblage positioning the clothes to embody their owners. These quirky personifications explore notions of identity, emphasising how we use material goods to define our appearance and in turn our sense of self.

Volich graduated with BA Honours in Visual Arts in 2000 from Australian National University and is currently undertaking a Masters in Visual Arts at University of Sydney. He continues to exhibit extensively both nationally and internationally across a broad range of media. In 2000 he was awarded the Queens Trust Award for emerging artists for Hotel California 2000 at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, since then he has been selected for numerous awards including Citibank Photographic Portraiture Prize at the Art Gallery New South Wales and short listed for the RIPE ANZ Art & Australia award. Are we there yet, was screened in the Australian Dance Awards at Sydney Opera House in 2006, and Volich was selected for inclusion in the Hamburg Fringe Festival, Germany 2003. During 2009 and 2010, Volich will be participating in Illume: Projections after Dark, a project involving several artists creating commissioned works for the exterior facade of the Campbelltown Arts Centre.

In 2008 he has exhibited in multiple group shows including Parade: Manufacturing Selves in Photography, as part of the Vivid Photography Festival, Looking Out, Macquarie University Gallery, Sydney, and Roving Eye, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London UK. He has been prolific in his engagement with Australian Artist Run Initiatives, presenting work both as solo and group exhibitions in spaces such Firstdraft Gallery, MOP, Loose project space, and Westspace, as well as inclusions in the publication Runway.

These images are a selection from the artist's portfolio. More images are available for viewing in the gallery's Print Room.