Trent Parke’s The Black Rose, the culmination of 7 years of work, opens on March 14 at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
“Collectively, they represent the fruits of an epic journey Parke began in a coastal Adelaide suburb in 2007, and which would end up yielding more than 3000 photographs, 15,000 words of text, 14 books, and various videos, installations and short films harvested from images taken around the South Australian capital and on road trips across the country over a period of seven years. In March at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Parke, the only Australian full member of the prestigious international Magnum Photos agency, will launch The Black Rose, an intensely personal exhibition born of childhood grief and one he views as the most significant of his career. The exhibition, which will occupy the entire bottom floor of the gallery, will be the largest single exhibition of the artist’s work, featuring everything from 120cm x 150cm silver gelatin prints to a site-specific installation at the entrance of the stairs (the “forest” with birds and bats) at around 26m by 4m.The director of AGSA, Nick Mitzevich, says the institution is honoured to “be the first gallery to present The Black Rose, one of our most ambitious contemporary art projects to date, and presented on a scale seldom seen.””
Read more about the journey of this body of work at The Australian