Danica Chappell
(b. 1972, Australia. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Danica Chappell has an established darkroom practice that draws from photography’s history of camera-less exchange and experimentation with light-sensitive substrates. With an interest in the malleability of photographs, Chappell plays with light, shadow, form and colour through a series of darkroom interventions designed to question and challenge photographic conventions.

Surface measure, 2022–23, is a large-scale installation of unique photographic artworks printed on a range of materials. Commissioned for Melbourne Now, the work continues the artist’s explorations of camera-less images, using the solitary, performative darkroom process as a tactile engagement with the finished image. As the artist says:

‘The contemporary photograph, commodified from science, is a complex amalgam of fixativity and reflection. Blending timelines, with various techniques, turns the gaze toward a discourse on (pre)photographic intent that leans into painting using expressive constructed densities. Tension emerges in the transfer from ‘actual’ to ‘ocular’ between one matter and another. My darkroom practice is expressive of latent photographic tensions often generated by a ‘slip’. This is inclusive of the interspatial moments where an object is contorted through its shadow, recalled from memory that is guided by touch.’

Chappell completed her Master of Fine Art (by Research) at Victorian College of the Arts in 2012. Since then, she has exhibited around Australia and internationally. Recent exhibitions include a solo exhibition commission for PHOTO2021, as well as exhibitions at Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana, USA; Heide III Project Gallery, Melbourne; Monash Gallery of Art (MGA); Spring 1883 Art Fair; Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; and Caves Gallery, Melbourne.