Toby Richardson
Exhibitions
More Singles Couples and Queens - 2008
Toby Richardson 'More Singles, Couples and Queens' March 6 - 29, 2008 Discarded mattresses form the unlikely subject of Toby Richardson's inaugural Melbourne exhibition, 'more, singles couples and queens'. Richardson found each of the mattresses on the side of the road, where they had been left for hard waste collection, and took them to his studio to photograph before returning them to the piles of household debris. Much like the individual pictures in a series of portraits, each mattress is uniquely individual with its own story to tell. Each is defined by the distinctive fabric of its cover, its colour, the number and type of buttons and the stitching. But it is the signs of wear that are more telling. Watermarks on some, frayed and faded patches on others, cigarette burns, even mildew and mould. Springs tend to sag, threads unravel and innards sometimes spill out, metaphors for discarded dreams, uncontained pain or unrelenting poverty. Richardson has added to the implicit stories of the mattresses by giving them titles, often gleaned from the relinquishing owners of the mattresses - 'Coffee stains and cigarettes', 'Three moves and eight partners' and 'Long summers on holiday'. Each mattress is also joined to a postcode somewhere in Adelaide, where Richardson lives and works, imbuing the works with a socio- political dimension and highlighting the multiple layers operating within this body of work. Captured using a large format camera, the crisply detailed works are printed to scale, either single, double, queen or king size. The scale of these giclee prints, which highlights the humour integral to Richardson's practice, emphasises the skill and sophistication of his craft. Set against a stark white background and in minimal white frames, the clarity and level of detail of each mattress is wondrous - buttons, stains, even thread counts are clearly visible. It feels as if the mattresses are actually in front of us, leaning against the wall. Through Richardson's lens, the viewer assumes a voyeuristic role, one traditionally reserved for photographers, peeping in on the site of people's most private thoughts and most intimate deeds. Toby Richardson lectures in photography at the South Australian School of Art. His work has generated national and international interest. He has won numerous awards and is represented in many public and private collections, both in Australia and overseas, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, the National Library of Australia and Artbank.
Buyers, Sellers and Dealers - 2010
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