Artist Name: KAILUM GRAVES
Artwork Title: MEMORY COHERENCE
Medium: Archival pigment print on canvas, framed
Size: 121 x 79cm
Price: $9500
About the Artist:
Kailum Graves is an artist and binary archivist critically obsessed with the artifactual digital object. Through artworks, writing, and curatorial projects he investigates the hidden and invisible structures of power. He does this by contemplating themes as diverse as economic inequality, the algorithmic nature of digital photography, the bombardment of media imagery, the politics of fear and the threat of otherness, the shifting boundaries between bodies and technologies, photographic manipulation and its representation of reality, and celebrity culture. While this interest stems from very personal experience and is a way for him to begin to understand, accept, and deal with his own post-traumatic stress disorder, angst, anxiety, and depression, his work addresses ideas, metaphors, images, themes, (dark) humour, feelings, and symbols which are universally shared (the nuances of human existence).
Artist Statement:
Memory coherence is a continuation of an ongoing investigation into ways of emphasising the algorithmic nature of digital photography, while at the same time paying homage to Eleanor who has always believed in me, even during my deepest moments of self-doubt. To metaphorically represent Ellie’s perpetual support during the highs and lows of my art practice and career, I repeatedly uploaded and downloaded an image of Ellie to the Internet. I did this to the point where the work became more performative than photographic. Nonetheless, the slow and gentle degradation of the image as it is compressed and eroded away played with the ubiquitous dichotomies between physical and digital, and between the so-called ‘original’ and the copy.
Judge’s Comment:
Kailum majored in art history and philosophy at the University of Queensland, graduating in 2011 with an Honours dissertation focused on American Internet-based activist group The Yes Men, Russian collective Voina, and international hacktivist group Anonymous
Career highlights include being exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra; international exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Switzerland, China, Brazil, Denmark, Iceland, Russia, Portugal, Poland, Malaysia, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and the United States; being a finalist in numerous international and national art awards;
winning the 2016 Clayton Utz Art Award; and being acquired by the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery’s permanent collection.
