Farah Al Qasimi: Star Machine

Al Qasimis photographs of flowers are rarely real, instead being represented metonymically as object, ornament, pattern, and image. This publication accompanies the homonymous exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, curated by Rachel Cie?la, and focuses on our shared aspirations for transcendence beyond our daily lives.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 74 pages
Publication date: 26 September 2023
Publisher: Mousse Publishing

Flowers are a common theme in Al Qasimis photographs, but they are rarely genuine. Instead, they are symbolically portrayed as objects, ornaments, patterns, and images. In a series of flower studies, Al Qasimis natural forms are translated materially into a glittering crystal trinket, a perishable garnish carved from a tomato or carrot, and a sugary decoration piped in pink frosting. By capturing this material metamorphosis, Al Qasimi amplifies the ways in which flowers are commonly consumed as ornamental commodities intended to embellish and entice.

Titled after Farah Al Qasimis photograph Star Machine (2021), a self-portrait in which the artist uses the star machine to transcend the monotony of her surroundings after two weeks of quarantine, this publication accompanies the homonymous exhibition at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, curated by Rachel Cie?la. Presenting a selection of photographs from across new and existing bodies of work, which are wrapped in found images sourced from Alibaba merchants, this book speaks to our shared aspirations for transcendence beyond our daily lives.

Understanding the camera as a relational tool, Al Qasimis hyper-colourised and richly textured photographs focus our attention upon how we see, feel, and initiate contact with people, places, or ways of being within todays world. Published in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 302 x 226 x 10 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9788867495856