Margaret Carnegie Gallery: 13 November 2009 - 24 January 2010

Jamie Holcombe, Cherrywood Service Station, 2008, digital photograph

It's time to take a new look at the city around us in Civic Melancholy, an exhibition of photographs of Wagga Wagga and its surroundings by Riverina-based artist Jamie Holcombe. Civic Melancholy uncovers aspects of our urban environment that we too often ignore: many visitors will recognise places around town that we pass by every day unaware, and others will remember sites recorded here that have since been irrevocably transformed.

The photographs in Civic Melancholy form a random sequence of large-scale imahes of landscapes and structures from Wagga Wagga and other smaller communities throughout the region, and evoke an urban life cycle: empty fields and bush give way to construction sites, houses and office blocks emerge and then fall into disrepair, and their remains collapse back into the soil.

Jamie Holcombe describes Civic Melancholy as 'an exhibition of urban landscapes with a regional focus, but whilst the compositions are deliberate and aesthetically disciplined, the subject matter is inherently less elegant. The consequence, at least for me, elicits not the more customary mood of sentimentality, but rather intuits a sense of the melancholy.'

Jamie Holcombe, Murrumbidgee Flour Mill 2009, digital photograph

Opening

When:     Saturday 14 November, 6:00 - 8:00pm
Where:    Margaret Carnegie Gallery
Cost:       Free