Benjamin Prabowo Sexton
Peaceful interval
1-22 December 2021

Benjamin Prabowo Sexton works predominantly with photography, placing an emphasis on the postproduction values of the medium. Sexton utilises his photographic archive to alter images through experimental darkroom processes, such as masking and misregistration to form new compositions. His works are often monochromatic, unique state, silver gelatin prints that combine collage, photography and drawing techniques to step outside the traditional conventions of photographic practice.

For Peaceful interval, Sexton has created large photographic works formed of multiple panels of unique silver gelatin prints. The works combine his photographs taken on Gunaikurnai Country (Gippsland) with hand-colouring in oils. These quotidian fragments of urban and rural landscapes are treated to subtle interventions of colour and process, giving images that are evocative of Sexton’s experience of, and emotional response to these places. Just as Sexton creates a photographic archive of images from his daily life, he also collects fragments of text from his daily encounters, and these works have been titled with phrases from his archive of collected language.

““My day job took me to Gunaikurnai Country (Gippsland), where I would spend days at a time for work, but would have ten or fourteen hours between shifts. A large part of my photographic practice starts from documentation. I would drive around the area shooting liberally at both the ‘natural’ and human-made environments. I would think about photography as document and how looking at a photo would take me to the place / time in which it was taken. Using paint on top of the printed image is a way to take me away from the photo. The use of paint allows me to introduce different feelings, textures and colours to reflect an internal emotion about a place and its photographic representation - in a way that feels more natural to me than using other techniques within the photographic medium such as lighting gels, colour film, or digital manipulation.””

— Benjamin Prabowo Sexton

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Benjamin Prabowo Sexton (né Lichtenstein) is an Indonesian-born, Melbourne-based artist. Recent solo exhibitions include Touch, Daine Singer (2019), Keen, c3 (2018), Bound For Glory, a collaboration with Oscar Perry, The Honeymoon Suite (2017), Living In Oblivion, Anna Pappas Gallery (2015), Flower, Fort Delta (2015), Crescent, Neospace (2014), I Know You Will Be Happy Here, Utopian Slumps (2013) and Death Adder, Chapter House Lane (2013). Group exhibitions include The National, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2021), Index, Centre for Contemporary Photography (2020), Illusions and Allusions, Missing Persons (2018), Group Show: Second Iteration, a collaborative exhibition with Arts Project Australia, Arts Project Australia (2016), The Bends, PhotoAccess (2016), The Alchemists: Rediscovering Photography in the Age of the Jpeg, Australian Centre for Photography (2015) and Mental, Muddguts Gallery New York (2014).Sexton was a finalist for the 2013 Bowness Prize, and was recipient of the 2006 Kodak Salon Excellence in Photomedia award at the Centre for Contemporary Photography. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photography) from the Victorian College of the Arts.