Untitled by Tajette O'Halloran

Details

Retail price for the framed work is for pick-up from NERAM, Armidale. Shipping Australia-wide can be arranged and will be invoiced separately.

Retail price for unframed prints already includes shipping Australia-wide.

Year: 2025

Framed size: 1005mm x 772.5mm

Unframed print size: 1000mm x 767.5mm

Medium: Canson platine rag

Description

For the past three years I've been returning to the Bexhill Quarry on the outskirts of Lismore, NSW documenting the people and ecosystems within its parameters. The location, with its aqua blue water nestled under towering sandstone cliffs, is an abandoned brickworks quarry that has become a popular swimming destination for both locals and tourists.

The quarry serves as a constant backdrop to an ever evolving microcosm, bearing witness to the people coming and going, the flora blooming and dying and the landscape shifting and changing – evoking a sense of 'place' as temporal and rhythmic in a more-than-human world.

A mother swimming with her teenage son... girls vaping under the pines... a collapsed road from the February flood... Wisteria in bloom... cousins born and raised on the same street….a cicada caught in a web.

This work focuses on the intricate relationships between humanity and the environment, capturing the ongoing process of repair, rebuilding, and recovery that characterises this community. Set against a backdrop of collective resilience, the quarry becomes a site where individuals seek refuge from the heat, and the more subtle pervasive hardships in their lives. Through these connections, the work uncovers the ways in which both human interaction and the surrounding environment engage in a constant state of flux and transformation, reflecting an unspoken rhythm of healing, renewal, and adaptation.

Biography

Tajette O'Halloran is an Australian photographic artist whose work explores the intricacies of interpersonal relationships within suburban and rural landscapes. For almost a decade, O'Halloran has dedicated her artistic practice to two major ongoing series, 'In Australia' and 'The Quarry.'

O'Halloran has received widespread recognition for her work. She is currently undergoing a 12 month commission with powerhouse Museum and will be holding her first solo exhibition in Melbourne in July. She was awarded the British Journal of Photography's Portrait of Humanity award in 2019 and the Jurors Pick in the 2020 Lens Culture Award. She was also named a finalist in the National Portrait Prize in both 2021 and 2023, and was shortlisted for numerous photography awards including The Olive Cotton Award (2021) where she received an honourable mention, The Doug Moran Photographic Prize (2016-2019) The Bowness Photography Prize (2016,2019) and The PH Museum Women's Photography Grant (2021).

Her work has been featured in Australian and international publications, including the British Journal of Photography (UK), The New York Times (USA) and The Guardian (AUS). O'Halloran has contributed as both an artist and curator in ACTS I-VII at Benalla Art Gallery as part of PHOTO 2022 and is a member of Oculi Collective.

Home: Lismore, NSW