Justine Varga is currently featured by Art Collector in their online art news. ‘Justine Varga : Camera Observa’ focuses on the balance between Varga’s intuitive and materially-emphasised photography practice and the controversy and critical response it has acquired.
The intellectual rigour of Varga’s work is often emphasised in descriptions of the artist and her practice. But while there is a fierce intelligence behind it, the work’s rich materiality is never diminished by an overbearing conceptual rigidity. Along with the film itself, Varga uses “a fairly limited amount of prosaic and abject materials in the production of my photo- graphs, coupled with various darkroom processes”, she says. The film is variously drawn on, handled, scratched, carried around, cried on and spat on by the artist over an extended period of time and then is physically manipulated in multiple ways to arrive at the final print.
Carrie Miller