RAGAMUFFINS. Perth Centre for Photography, 18 February - 14 March

Perth is the most isolated metropolis in the world. In the current context of globalisation, this Western Australian capital bears resemblance to our European Materialist societies. This urban environment has inspired the photographer, Christophe Canato, to create a series of photographs entitled ‘Ragamuffins’.

Consumption, possession, ownership, affection, abandonment, globalisation, migration, nomadism, mobility, homelessness and solitude are but a few of the notions explored in Christophe’s body of work.

Ragamuffins is a photographic series of abandoned couches and armchairs throughout the streets of Perth and its surrounding suburbs. This census of objects of near human resemblance is based on the communal theme which focuses on consumer habits and human behaviours in our materialistic society.

From the frills of a flowery patterned grandmother chair to the cracks in a red-leather couch or the missing spring of a bargain recliner, the members of our community have left their mark on Christophe Canato’s photographs. These photographs also carry the stigma of our social classes, from the lowest to the highest, the industrious to the indolent, the blossoming to the withering…

If one can easily conjure a classification, then one can also picture the life of the furniture’s past owners and the manner in which they have adapted to their social surroundings. From the most luxurious to the most miserable, one can raise the question as to how many of these couches will find a second life and therefore some comfort into the makeshift housing of those disowned by society.

Through the warm colours of the artificially lit city, Christophe Canato’s nocturnal shots give the inanimate objects a soul. The context is cosy, intimate and warm hearted, nevertheless the ideas of isolation, solitude and abandonment still maintain their significance. These photographs encourage the viewer to focus on the object and its immediate environment: a street, a building…

With a feeling of déjà-vu, Christophe Canato’s images create an amalgamation between the idea of indoor and outdoor, comfort and discomfort, portraiture and still-life.

Finalist - 2009 City of Joondalup Invitation Art Award

RAGAMUFFINS @ christophe canato

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1 - Fremantle Art Centre - 7 April to 24 May 2009 - Curated by Jasmin Stephens

FREMANTLE ART CENTRE

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol1 @ christophe canato

HUNTING TROPHIES VOL 1
Cristophe Canato’s Insect Bounty
Fremantle Arts Centre from Tuesday, April 7, til Sunday, May 24.
To be open by Margaret Moore

Confronted with the title Hunting Trophies Vol 1, one calls to mind any number of grand-scale stuffed moose-head plaques and bearskin floor rugs decorating the warmly lit salon of a seasoned North American big game hunter. What one doesn’t expect is a series of close-up insect photographs in the light-filled corridors of the Fremantle Arts Centre.
However the title Hunting Trophies, artist Christophe Canato insists, is integral to the work. “There are lots of symbols inside the title. We can imagine these huge things on the wall. It definitely has that idea of something we want to catch and kill and have control over and exhibit as something we’re proud to have killed, but also as something which is beautiful enough to be presentable and exhibited on our wall.”
With insects as his trophies French photographer Canato pushes the conventions, questioning which species do or do not qualify as worthy of ‘hunting’, as well as drawing on the very direct and visceral response human beings have to insects in general.
“These hunting trophies are a little special because they are not the hunting trophies we can see on the wall normally. The photographs are about a fascination with these kinds of species, insects in this case, which are normally something that can be very repulsive for humans but also very fascinating and attractive.”
Having studied art in France at Beaux-Arts, Grenoble, Canato’s interest in contemporary art has since taken a backseat, while he pursued a career in the fashion industry. Working as a commercial, contemporary dance and fashion photographer for many years, he has been able to develop his technical skills, and gain a greater understanding into the nature of the medium. But his passion for contemporary art is unwavering, and this exhibition merges both his artistic and technical capacities.
The insects are photographed in the palm of a human hand, and appear to levitate mysteriously. This flesh background, coupled with the insects’ apparent floating adds to the photographs’ complexity. The warm light given by human flesh removes the photographs from a biological context, making for a somewhat more comfortable confrontation for the viewer.
Yet the juxtaposition of the human with the insect highlights the vulnerability of the subjects, but also heightens the sense of discomfort and repulsion at the thought of these alien creatures in direct contact with the hand. It draws attention to the contradiction between what is alive and dead, which is further confounded by the ‘levitation’ of the insects, which imbues a sense of life in them, despite the title suggesting they are dead, objectified now as trophies.
Heightening this complexity even more is the fact that Canato stresses he doesn’t kill any of the insects, but collects them already dead, and that the title Hunting Trophies means less to him about hunting, but more about “relating to the collecting, the actual act of going out and finding the insects.
“The idea is not to be comfortable, the idea is to have all these ideas – attraction, repulsion, fear, control, fascination.
“So it’s a personal approach but it’s also very general. All of my work I try of course to involve some personal sentiment, but I think it’s definitely, with all my work, a story for everyone. It can be everybody’s story at the same time.”

CLAIRE KROUZECKY
X-PRESS Magazine, 23.04.09, issue n°1158

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1 / Media Release Fremantle Art Centre

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1 / WHAT'S ON (Fremantle Art Centre: April-June 09)

HUNTING TROPHIES Vol.1/X-Press magazine, 09-04-09, issue n°1156

Un Dimanche en Famille / FOTOFREO fringe 2008, 4 April-4 May / Alliance Française of Perth

Which childhood memories do we remember? Which of these relate specifically to our Sundays spent with family?

Some will remember the pleasures, the sharing, the tenderness of exchanges, and the joy of peaceful and educational Sundays.
The day where the whole family is finally available and reunited. A child’s happiness linked to the love he receives.
Others remember these Sundays as family obligations. Dull days that never end, the heavy atmosphere, being bound by rules, and having to tolerate participating in activities imposed by the family unit. “Go and get some fresh air, it will do you good”…, “It’s been two weeks since we saw your uncle and aunt”.
Christophe Canato’s work, “A family Sunday”, reveals to us the perception of emotions and recollections procured by these family reunions.
These active sensations occur more or less in episodes. “A family Sunday. Episode 1” is a trio of images. A country landscape immersed in cold colours. The trees and the odd person are seen as black silhouettes. This glacial landscape hovers between beauty, unease and serenity.



About Christophe Canato

Since the first works in 1985, on the body, its skin, and its movement in space, it was in 1990 that Christophe Canato began photography through contemporary dance with Jean-Claude Gallotta.
This new medium becomes essential in his research. These image combinations and their associations give birth to a series of diptychs such as, "de l'image aux sens" (from the image to the senses), "trajectoire" (trajectory), “je n'ai pas dit mon dernier mot" (I have not said my last word), but equally through the more personal works such as “no man’s land”, “pièces à conviction" (incriminating evidences)…