Ali McCann: An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics
- AU$35.00
- 36 pages
- 8.3 x 11.7″
- Softcover
- ISBN:
978-1-925788-02-0
- Design: Duncan Blachford
“The backdrops in these works originate from a collection of failed attempts; an archive of photo-sensitive paper salvaged from a photography college darkroom.”
Situated between abstraction and representation, Ali McCann’s practice engages with the ideas of formalism, materiality, visual perception, and the aesthetics of pedagogy. Found objects, in the form of obsolete teaching aids, unfinished projects, discarded photographs and art materials, serve as departure points for explorations of colour, light, shape, form, and space.
“Ali McCann’s An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics explores the liminal phases of artistic pedagogy and art production.”
“The backdrops in these works originate from a collection of failed attempts; an archive of photo-sensitive paper salvaged from a photography college darkroom.”
“These ‘failed attempts’ now become backdrops for still-life arrangements of obsolete teaching aids and other found or constructed objects.”
“The images themselves inhabit a realm of liminality – they are neither finished nor unfinished, but rather part of an ongoing process of aesthetic transformation.”
About the artist
Situated between abstraction and representation, Ali McCann’s practice engages with the ideas of formalism, materiality, visual perception, and the aesthetics of pedagogy. Found objects, in the form of obsolete teaching aids, unfinished projects, discarded photographs and art materials, serve as departure points for explorations of colour, light, shape, form, and space. Her still-life arrangements and video works undergo a succession of hybrid photographic processes to form uncanny and seemingly impossible renderings of the object within the picture plane. She draws inspiration from diverse sources such as foundational art history publications, outmoded art-and-design text books, 1970s amateur photography magazines, and from her personal experience as a student and teacher. Her reimagining of educational aesthetics is imbued with a nostalgia for the primary, exploratory phase of the creative process.
Ali McCann lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including, most recently: Slippery Images, NGV National Gallery of Victoria (2023), States of Disruption, Centre For Contemporary Photography (2022), Tree Log Paper Book, Bus Projects (2022), Not for the Sake of Something More, Sarah Scout Presents (2021), Οι νέοι, Gertrude Contemporary (2019), Still Life Pt III, Lon Gallery (2019), Masks for Magicians, Caves (2018), Polytechnic, Tristian Koenig (2018), An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics, c3 Contemporary Art Space (2017) and Throwing off the Hump, Kings Artist Run (2017). She was recently a finalist in the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2022 at HOTA, Surfers Paradise, QLD and the National Photography Prize 2020 at MAMA Murray Art Museum, Albury, NSW. Her work is held in public and private collections across Australia and abroad.
McCann completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, in 2017. She also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and a Graduate Diploma of Education, University of Melbourne. She currently teaches photographic studies in Naarm/ Melbourne.
Situated between abstraction and representation, Ali McCann’s practice engages with the ideas of formalism, materiality, visual perception, and the aesthetics of pedagogy. Found objects, in the form of obsolete teaching aids, unfinished projects, discarded photographs and art materials, serve as departure points for explorations of colour, light, shape, form, and space. Her still-life arrangements and video works undergo a succession of hybrid photographic processes to form uncanny and seemingly impossible renderings of the object within the picture plane. She draws inspiration from diverse sources such as foundational art history publications, outmoded art-and-design text books, 1970s amateur photography magazines, and from her personal experience as a student and teacher. Her reimagining of educational aesthetics is imbued with a nostalgia for the primary, exploratory phase of the creative process.
Ali McCann lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including, most recently: Slippery Images, NGV National Gallery of Victoria (2023), States of Disruption, Centre For Contemporary Photography (2022), Tree Log Paper Book, Bus Projects (2022), Not for the Sake of Something More, Sarah Scout Presents (2021), Οι νέοι, Gertrude Contemporary (2019), Still Life Pt III, Lon Gallery (2019), Masks for Magicians, Caves (2018), Polytechnic, Tristian Koenig (2018), An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics, c3 Contemporary Art Space (2017) and Throwing off the Hump, Kings Artist Run (2017). She was recently a finalist in the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2022 at HOTA, Surfers Paradise, QLD and the National Photography Prize 2020 at MAMA Murray Art Museum, Albury, NSW. Her work is held in public and private collections across Australia and abroad.
McCann completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, in 2017. She also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and a Graduate Diploma of Education, University of Melbourne. She currently teaches photographic studies in Naarm/ Melbourne.