Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Joachim Froese in his latest exhibition Echoes of Process on show from 15 September – 3 October, 2021. Echoes of Process illustrates the oscillation between science and art and our own rational and emotional ambiguous relationship with the non-human world through the documentation of plant seedlings.
Salt printing constitutes the first negative-positive paper-based process in 1839 by Henry Fox Talbot who was a keen botanist. By employing the same technique, Froese investigates the integration and merge of past and present photographic technologies. The handcrafted salt prints of plants grown by Froese depicts the fragility of our ecosystems and highlights themes of growth and death.
“Showing the very beginning of plant life, my photographs direct focus towards the miraculous moment when the seed’s dormant energy has turned into a new growth spurt, an existential moment when life is incredibly forceful and exposed at the same time,” writes Froese.
Joachim Froese was born in Montreal, Canada, grew up in Germany and migrated to Australia in 1991. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Tasmanian School of Art in Launceston in 1995, a Master of Visual Arts at the Queensland College of Art (QCA) in Brisbane in 2001, and a PhD (Art) at RMIT in Melbourne in 2017. Since 1996 Froese has exhibited widely across Australia, Europe, Asia and North America and his work is included in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia and QAGOMA.
His work has featured in numerous national and international art publications and in 2009 the Queensland Centre for Photography published a monograph of his work. Since 2001 he received numerous grants from the Australia Council, Arts Queensland and Arts Tasmania.
Image: Coriandrum sativum, 2020, Joachim Froese, salt print, 20 x 25cm. Image Courtesy of the artist and Jan Manton Gallery.
