Launch event: Thursday 5 August (open to the public)

Exhibition Dates: Friday 6 August – Saturday 4 September

Unrest explores ways to visualise tension, struggle and disruption as daily forces in opposition to freedom, safety and comfort. Photography served as a rapid means to compile a personal archive of images that documented sites of uprising, unrest, and impact, encountered on the streets of Paris in 2019. These artworks refer to sites where small and large acts of resistance, dissent, and unrest were observed. The preliminary research for this body of work was undertaken during a three-month residency at Cite International des Arts in Paris. It was pre-COVID, and there were many homeless people living in makeshift homes and tents throughout the picturesque Marais district. It was also the time of the weekly Gilets Jaunes protests. I produced a photographic survey of the streets documenting barricades, discarded rubbish, street furniture and public monuments draped with banners, flags and barrier tape. These urban surfaces had been embellished, attacked, and bore visible traces of impact. I photographed the hand-written cardboard signs of the homeless, protestors, workers and refugees.

My aim to expand the act of documentary photography through extreme manipulations of printed images in combination with reclaimed commonplace materials seeks to arouse a sense of place where upheaval, protest and battle have occurred, and where the lives of tourists, residents, homeless and displaced persons intersected.

Steven Carson was supported by the Marie Edwards Travel Scholarship to undertake a Studio Residency at the Rosamond McCulloch Studio, Cite International des Arts, Paris. He is Lecturer in Art and Graduate Research Coordinator at School of Creative Arts and Media, University of Tasmania.