Photo Book Melbourne

Magdalena Wywrot (Switek)
Opening night: 02 June 2016 / 6-8pm
Exhibition: 02 – 18 June 2016

“I watch her grow up, her body balancing on the borderline between innocence and guilt, between unawareness and awareness. She appears as my own younger self, a reflection caught in statu nascendi – the very moment when a stone is transformed into fruit.”

We finish our six month residency at Boyd School Studios with our fifth and final photography exhibition BORDERLINES – featuring the work of emerging Polish photographer, Magdalena Wywrot (Switek).

Borderlines – a border land of cognition. At times it is a thick line, etched with a sharp-edged stone, sometimes a subtle line notched with a scalpel. The purpose of this borderline is to be able to distinguish and capture the moment between dream and reality, dirt and purity. I tell of the continuity of the body, the fragmentation of time, and the apparent unpredictability of our existence.

Magdalena has been photographing her daughter for many years, documenting her ‘liberation from the cocoon of helplessness’ through stark and emotive black and white photography. Her film-based work abandons the limits of words, objects and concepts, creating ‘songs’ of humanity and light, movement combined with death and resentment united with ecstasy.

About the artist

Magdalena Wywrot (Switek) lives in Krakow, Poland and from time to time in USA. Her photographs have been published in magazines such as British Journal of Photography, die nacht, Witty, Hamburger eyes, Prism and exhibited in group shows across Europe such as Noorderlicht Festival, Tiff Photofestival, Debuts and Delhi Photo Festival.

Magdalena was one of the finalists of the 2016 Photobook Melbourne Photo Award and last year exhibited at group shows at both Delhi Photo Festival and Noorderlicht Photofestival in Amsterdam. She has been recognised as one of Poland’s most exciting street and documentary talents and we’re thrilled to exhibit her first ever solo show.

More information
www.magdalenaswitek.com

A huge thank you to Creative Spaces and City of Melbourne for the opportunity to use Boyd School Studios over the past six months. It has been wonderful to have a space to experiment, play, exhibit and share work from local and international artists, something we would not have been able to do without the artists residency grant. A huge thank you also to Momento Pro for their ongoing support, as well as Prism Imaging for printing this exhibition – we could not have done it without you.