About the Speakers
CHRIS BOWES
Chris Bowes is a photographer, artist and educated based in Naarm (Melbourne). His art incorporates elements of photography, video and installation, using these mediums to create glitches by manipulating the hardware and software of image-based systems. He has a keen interest in the history of digital imaging technology and how photographs and videos drive our understanding of, and participation in, the modern world.
Outside of his personal practice, Chris works as a photographer in the field of artwork and exhibition documentation, photographing for clients in a number of galleries and studios around Naarm (Melbourne). Within this work he photographs art of all mediums and captures images in several different styles, from documentation that tells the story of how an artwork inhabits a space, to technically perfect renditions of one-off pieces that can later be used to create reproductions.
Chris also teachers at RMIT where he specialises in alternative and experimental photography, and in his own business Kindred Cameras
focussing on the more traditional aspects of photos and video.
VINCENT ALESSI
Vincent has held numerous positions within public cultural institutions including as a Director and Senior Curator. He has curated exhibitions both nationally and internationally on artists as diverse as Mike Brown, Philip Hunter, Brook Andrew, Julie Rrap, Polkong Anading and the Ryan Sisters, and on topics varying from abstraction in Australian landscape painting to notions of place and identity in contemporary practice. In 2019 Vincent with colleagues Ry Haskings and Narelle Desmond founded the non-for-profit contemporary art space Conners Conners in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Vincent is committed to providing artists opportunities to present their work, both existing and new, with a focus on risk taking and experimentation. He also believes strongly in the importance of documenting, researching and contributing new knowledge through curatorial programming and academic writing.
Vincent is also an active art historian. His research interests include the life and work of Vincent van Gogh, mid-late 19th-Century European art, 19th-Century popular graphic illustration and Australian contemporary visual art and curatorial practice. In 2020 he published the book Popular Art and the Avant-Garde: Vincent van Gogh’s Collection of Newspaper and Magazine Prints and is currently researching the influence of Charles Dickens on the work of Van Gogh.