Graham Miller: FotoFreo Director & Photographer

Born in Hong Kong 1966
Lives in Fremantle

Graham Miller is a photographic artist and co-founder and director of FotoFreo Festival of Photography. His work has been exhibited internationally and throughout Australia, including Kaunas Photo Lithuania, Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Photography Gallery of Western Australia.

Deliberately moving away from traditional documentary aesthetics, Miller utilises a more directorial and conceptual approach, using photography as a tool of imaginative exploration rather than a reactive mechanical process for recording reality. “I’m interested in the ambiguity of images. The way that all photographs have element of fabrication and truth making.”
His series the The Performance of Everyday Life (2000) was included in the show New Australiana for The Festival of Sydney (2001) and toured throughout Australia. These portraits celebrate the eccentricity of Australian suburbia, where everyday people are encouraged to perform for the camera amongst the cluttered debris of their lounge rooms and backyards.
His latest series Suburban Splendour, exhibited at The Turner Gallery in Perth in 2007 and later that year at Kaunas Photo Lithuania, operates in the gap between post-modern fiction and documentary fact. These images are poignant, theatrical set pieces capturing isolated individuals in everyday suburban settings, whose ambiguous narratives deliver a powerful emotional charge and invoke bitter truths that are piercing, insightful and very real.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2007 Kaunas Photo Festival 07, Lithuania (Prize Winner)
2007 Suburban Splendour, Turner Galleries, Perth
2006 Suburban Melancholy, FotoFreo International Festival of Photography, Fremantle
2002 Mementos, FotoFreo International Festival of Photography, Fremantle
2000 The Epic of the Everyday, Photography Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
1998 Streetwise: New York Street Photography, Photography Gallery of Western Australia, Perth

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2008 Upcoming – Darkness Falls, Melbourne Art Fair, The Turner Gallery, Royal Exhibition Building
2007 Phosphorus 15, Perth Centre for Photography
2007 In Transit, Alliance Française, Sydney
2006 Image Inner Mongolia Project, China Photo Press, Beijing, China
2006 Melbourne Art Fair, The Church Gallery, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne
2005 City of Joondalup Invitation Art Award, Perth
2005 Sydney Art 05, Horden Pavilion, Sydney
2005 Between a Blink and Recognition, The Church Gallery, Perth
2004 Artitude, Burswood Convention Centre, Perth
2004 City of Perth Photomedia Award, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art
2000-2003 New Australiana tours nationally
2000 New Australiana, Australian Centre for Photography, Festival of Sydney
2003 Difficult and Dangerous Times, Fremantle Arts Centre
1999 Over the Fence- WA Comedy Short Film Festival, Film and Television 1998 Metropolis Super 8 Film Festival, Fremantle
1998 Visionaries, Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, Fremantle Institute, Fremantle

TEACHING

2003-2008 Sessional Lecturer (Photomedia), Edith Cowan University
1998 Arts worker, DADAA (WA) Disability in the Arts, Disadvantage in the Arts

ART EDUCATION

1996-1999 Bachelor of Communications (Photomedia) First Class Honours

COLLECTIONS

Murdoch University Collection, Edith Cowan University Collection, National Gallery Victoria, numerous private collections in Australia and internationally

BIBLIOGRAPHY

2008    Robert Cook, “Lonely Ain’t No Eyesore”, PHOTOFILE, Issue 82 Guilty Secrets
2007    Ric Spencer, “Angst meets serenity in blue” The West Australian Weekend Extra, Sat 14 July
2007    Susan Bright, “Go West”, C INTERNATIONAL PHOTO MAGAZINE, issue 4
2007    Ric Spencer ”Mobile Babel Gives Ambiguity Back to Images” Weekend West Australian, Sat 3 Feb
2006    Sara Haq “Fabulous Faraway Foto Festival”, HOTSHOE: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY, London Jun/Jul 2006
2006    Robert Cook ‘Planets’ Essay for Suburban Melancholy
2005    Ric Spencer  “Subtle Meanings in the Infrastructure”, The Weekend Western Australian, Sat 14 May
2003    Robert Cook “Lunar Language” on West Australian photomedia artists Photofile magazine Issue 69 Suburbia
2001    Daniel Palmer “Shorts” on emerging photomedia artists  Photofile magazine Issue 62 Fresh
2000    David Bromfield “Substance Reigns” Big Weekend, The Weekend West Australian, Sat 8 April
2000    Robert Cook “Glimpses into Hidden Suburbia” The West Australian, Wed 29 March
2000    Joanne McCulloch “Ordinary Suburbia lens itself to the Bizarre”,
The Australian, Fri Mar 17

CONTACT DETAILS

PO Box 1147 Fremantle WA 6959
gwam@iinet.net.au

080206