ACP: Hijacked!

HIJACKED @ The Australian Centre for Photography
Curated by Mark McPherson
Gallery 1 + 2 + 3 + 4
(GALLERY 3 CLOSES 6 JULY)
13 June to 19 July | Opening Thursday June 12, 2008

“The most important book of photographs to come out of Australia in the past five years … Hijacked defines the shape of things to come.” Alasdair Foster, Director, Australian Centre for Photography

Providing a voice for some of the most exciting and provocative new photography from Australia and America, Hijacked takes a road less travelled. The exhibition erases traditional boundaries between art, document and snapshot to point towards the future of contemporary photomedia.

Shunning repetitive and predictable curatorial structures, Hijacked’s aesthetic is driven by the mindset and energy of young and emerging practitioners. Embracing the prevailing wanderlust of their generation, their work exhibits a fascination with international subcultures, fragmented trends, alternate life styles and urban landscapes. The exploration of suburban pleasures is placed on par with ‘high’ artistic experimentation.

Just as remarkable as the exhibition itself is the story of how it came about. Mark McPherson, an emerging WA photographer, initially conceived the project as a zine. Five years on, working from suburban Fremantle, Hijacked had grown through informal online networks to bring the work of 44 Australian and US artists into a substantial casebound book. Having realised the publication without leaving Perth for the past four years, Mark McPherson is circling the globe to launch the book in Fremantle, Berlin, Paris, Stuttgart, New York and Sydney. Relentless in its ambition, much like the photographers, writers and contemporaries whose work it presents, Hijacked is a hybrid of real time photography and life in real time.

Exhibition curated by Mark McPherson Book edited by Mark McPherson and Max Pam
IMAGE © Juha Tolonen Lounge 2004

Worldwide book orders available from IdN.