Through a glass, Darkly
A Photographic exhibition by an award winning photographic artist Emilio Cresciani
Emilio Cresciani is an exhibiting artist and a freelance photographer, living in Sydney. He graduated form Sydney College of Arts in 2012. In his relatively short career, Cresciani won the 2018 Dis-Moi Dix Mots Competition, Alliance Française Sydney. In 2019 he was a finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize, (with an image from the Through a Glass, Darkly series), Olive Cotton Award and a Semi Finalist, Head On Portrait Prize. He was a finalist in the 2018 Mandorla Art Prize; 2017 Bowness Photography Prize; 2015 Chippendale New World Art Prize and the Agendo Art Prize; the 2010 National Youth Self Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in Australia and his work was featured in the People Gallery, National Geographic Magazine Photo Contest in 2010.
Cresciani’s works explore redundancy and urban change. His interest is in objects, structures, buildings and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Waste centres, derelict service stations, road works, car parks and abandoned factories. Beauty is found in these places of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence.
Car recycling yards house hundreds of smashed cars, row upon row, with their bonnets up. Car lovers stroll through the space to purchase spare parts. The smashed safety glass of the windscreens create an interesting patterns that look like street networks seen from above, recalling Sydney’s current road expansions. More and more roads cut new paths through cities, suburbs and the country in a quest of transporting and connecting.
The ever-expanding network of roads defines movement and life at a cost – swallowing land and livelihoods. The cracked glass is a metaphor for these interconnections made by roads and their central place in capitalism. Through the shattered glass we see the dark nature of rampant consumerism and the devastation of our environment that is required to sustain it. Both the smashed cars and our road networks share redundancy.
The black and white images reference our impaired perception of what we are doing to our world: For now we see through a glass, darkly.
Opening night, Friday November 1, 6:00 pm
Exhibition run: November 1–17, 2019.
Wednesday – Friday 1–6
Saturday – Sunday 11–4