Interview by Gaia Amorello
All Images © Katrina Stamatopoulos
Katrina Stamatopoulos (Singleton, 1989) is a Greek-Australian artist based in London. Katrina’s research focuses on making connections between food and images; their digestion and representation, source and distribution, and intertwining with everyday process. In her work, the artist questions the representation of photography and its meaning as a collective object and form.After receiving an MA from Goldsmiths in London in 2020, she co-founded the project space Equivalentbehaviour in London and has exhibited internationally.She has participated in several group exhibitions such as Built Photography, Museum of Australian Photography, Melbourne (forthcoming); Un/Sens, Christies, London; Rome; Transmutation, The Margate School, the MFA graduate exhibition at Goldsmiths, London; SURGE, the Courtauld East Wing Biennial, at Somerset house, London; Real/Unreal, Bath Photography Festival, Bath; Altered States, St. Johns Crypt, London. Solo exhibitions include Preying for Modesty (Meatheads), held at PhotoAccess, Canberra, Australia.
Katrina’s research is expressed through concrete actions, ranging from the use of expired paper media, to the exploration of the darkroom, to manual intervention on photographs, integrating restoration and painting techniques. Manual photographic retouching plays a significant role in her work, leading her to reflect on the power representation and manipulation have over reality and information.
Through new habits and obsessions, such as collecting expired film, taken from London laboratories, and scraps of food and bone, Katrina investigates the relationship between objects and the environment, analysing themes that delve into the life cycle of objects: from use, to discard and reuse.
In Pest or friend (2021 – ongoing), presented for our Call, the artist explores the relationship between man and animal, bringing to light dynamics of power and control.
The images produced by the artist delve into the details of the matter of found objects, generating figures that emerge as creatures of a new ecosystem and offering a disturbing and surreal perspective.
Gaia Amorello (GA): Hello Katrina, Welcome to this section dedicated to shortlisted authors from the Open Call. First of all, congratulations for being selected with your project and thank you for participating!
Can you tell us about your first encounter with photography and how you delved into the study of images?
Katrina Stamatopoulos (KS): Hi! Thank you for having me.
It wasn’t until I started studying at University in Sydney (around 2009), that I began to pick up a camera more often. Practicing hand/eye coordination, and with the materiality of film… photography became a way for me to understand and misunderstand the deceptive nature of images. It still confuses me and I like that.
(GA): You currently live in London where you co-founded Equivalentbehaviour, dedicated to the exchange of ideas through workshops, installations and live performances.
Can you tell us more about how the project started and what direction it has taken?
(KS): Equivalentbehaviour stemmed from the relationship my partner and I have towards making, sharing and being dedicated to creative practice. One of our main focuses in our individual work involves preserving craft as practice and developing new objects sustainably. Building community and having a space to share skills, ideas and knowledge is our biggest motivation.
Being observant to the production methods of industries we work in, we developed the space with the intention and necessity of doing things on a low budget, and sharing resources from the community around us. This also includes re-using materials from the street or sourcing off-cuts from manufacturing companies. Ideas for our events can form through found objects, archival footage, and a deep desire to bring people together – through food, hospitality, art and sound. In an environment that is our living space, an art space and a production studio, there’s a certain freeness we feel with it – it’s not quite a gallery, an event space or a makers space. It can shift between depending on whom we are working with and what we are doing.
Having a Scanning studio dedicated to digitisation, it has also welcomed many photographers and artists. This has helped to mold interest in the photographic hand retouching workshops we have been hosting for the past year. These Workshops developed from learning and loving the craft of hand retoucher Kevin O’Neill, and from being connected to darkrooms around London.
(GA): In your creative process you start from the recovery of discarded elements, such as food waste, old paper stock or material from photo workshops. What inspires the choice to work with these elements, what are the purposes of your practice?
(KS): Existing or discarded objects always arrive with a story, a set of questions that ask how they came to be and how they have become what they seem. I see discarded elements as material produced through human use or interaction. It’s an accessible and unpredictable starting point where abstractness can form through displacement. This could be from food waste or an object coming from the street. Attempting to make meaning is not the point for me, but attempting to understand existing relationships between objects, environments and images, is more a part of my drive.
Discarded objects and food are material like photographic paper or film. They sometimes ask for something specific, like with old paper stock; it may need a particular way of being worked with, a specific project or a lot more time to expose, but that’s what makes the process intriguing. It’s a form of negotiation. Sometimes it is more frustrating than intriguing, as things may not work out how you imagined or not work out at all. But I think that’s very important for me, not to be disappointed, but being pushed to find another way.
(GA): While creating images, your method is experimental and multimedia. Often occurring off-camera, it alternates working phases where different media are employed, both analogue and digital. Can you tell us more about your creative process?
(KS): Projects seem to start taking shape after a new habit or obsession forms – this could be technically related to a material, a way of photographing or a new romance with a subject. Practicing behaviour and studying this new habit can culminate into a ‘series’ or collection of image related forms. An example of this was when I was making pinhole cameras from shoeboxes or supermarket boxes over a set period of time and placing them disguised in public. It wasn’t until I exhausted the scenarios, results and myself, for a collection of pinholes that I felt varied or complete. Facilitating photographs rather than ‘taking’ them, from a perspective I would be unable to achieve, and within the parameter of paper/ film stock available, can sometimes feel much more exciting, rather then to try and gain control in making an image. But sometimes this is necessary too!
At the moment I have bagged up pieces of paper from a 10” cut up roll of Kodak paper. It was unwanted from a client because of its surface texture (which I really like). I am collecting the plastic wrappers of cucumbers from Supermarkets and have started working in colour with photograms. The idea for the collection and an object to house it is there, but I won’t know exactly what it will be yet (until I have collected enough plastic wrap waste for the amount of paper). Projects like this seem to be task based.
(GA): The manipulation of the image is linked to a continuous search for perfection, which can be traced back to both the theme of representation and shelf life. Your research, in fact, focuses on the connection between food and images, their digestion and representation, origin and distribution. One of your themes therefore is also consumption. We touch pathologic levels of consumption, just as we frantically produce and enjoy images. Can you elaborate on this relationship and what do you think is the urgency in your critique?
(KS): I feel that curiosity must be savoured with image making and sharing. Connections with photography often surround notions of explaining. Or through sharing. But who are images for and what do they show? Is representation a form of achieving something we may not be able to grasp in real time?
The way that food is represented and produced for convenience, and the illusion that is created around production methods relates to the illusion of how we may perceive with our eyes. Images are also image-inary. Photography’s flow into the digital world has dispersed the location of the image. The location of food sources are also scattered. This connection between inside and outside, body and machine, merge ideas of consumption in food and images for me.
One of our connective necessities as an animal is to feed our body, provide it with nourishment and energy. My practice is based on asking questions that surround consumption. I don’t have answers, but I’ll keep looking.
(GA): In Pest or friend (2023 – ongoing), proposed for our Open Call, you analyse the same thematics mentioned before like search for perfection, use of waste and consumption of food. The intention, however, is to take a deeper look at the relationship between humans and animals. Can you tell us about this latest work, which is still in progress, its connection to previous projects and its possible developments?
(KS): Pest or friend relates to the animals that can thrive or adapt to human collective behaviour. They may feed on human food waste, but aggravate because they are around. This is related to the control humans have placed onto animals in various ways over time, and the vulnerability we can have with the unknown because of a yearning to control. With the ibis bird in Australia for example, it is deemed as a ‘bin chicken’. This species has moved and settled in Australian coastal cities because of the abundance of human food waste and water being close by. In contrast to the declining availability and diversity in their natural habitats, they have incredible adaptability techniques and have shifted closer and closer towards city life. Relationships between other city dwellers are explored in this work such as bats, flies and pigeons. There are traps to keep these creatures away from shitting on our infrastructure, or to rid them of our environments, yet they are a testament to the wastefulness of production and consumption of humans and the heavy impact being had on natural habitats.
This work could seem as a testament to these creatures, and for me, connects to consumption and the environment hopefully in different ways to my other work. At the moment I am spending time in the darkroom with various old paper stock and photographs taken in Australia and in my studio in London. Techniques in restoration with photography and painting are at a focus right now. Let’s see where it goes!
(GA): In your perspective, how can an image establish a connection with both digital and physical space? And what significance do these distinct spatial dimensions hold for you?
(KS): We are at a moment where digital and physical spaces are not dichotomies, but in my opinion, are becoming more related to being blurred existence. With both spatial dimensions feeding into one another, it’s important for me to focus on distancing myself, forming images through process and materiality.
(GA): Pellicola Magazine and Mucho Mas! selected your work to spark an encounter and a discussion on transformation, not only of the image but also related to its extension into space. What are your expectations related to this encounter?
(KS): The only expectation I have, is to try not to have expectation. I would like to see the work resonating with the space through subject and form. The Gallery is an incubator for questions to be asked outside of its context.. maybe my aim is for questions to arise not only about the work but more broadly and outwardly, towards other situations and surroundings.
