"I
find Christophe Canato's images immediately arresting for their deep beauty and
mystery. The strange yet familiar portraits are as pure and innocent as they
are menacing, bestial and childlike, yet always composed with great
elegance."
Sean Tobin, 2016
French-Australian
Christophe Canato lives and works in Perth, Western Australia. Born
in France, he grew up in an artistic family environment where his
father was a painter. As an early drawer and painter himself, he successfully
entered the Beaux-Arts school at seventeen years of age and studied Visual
Arts. Christophe received his DNSEP in 1989 (comparable to a Master degree
in Fine Arts) and in 1993 a Diploma of Fashion from the prestigious Institut
Français de la Mode (French Fashion Institute) in Paris. After working
freelance in the Paris fashion industry, photography became his favoured tool
to express himself as an artist.
In
1997 Christophe won first prize in the Paris Salon de la Jeune Création, and
began his career as an artist in earnest. In 2005 he moved to Perth and quickly
established himself as an artist to watch, winning a Town of Vincent Art Award
that year. Since then he has continued to exhibit extensively in Australia and
overseas.
Ricochet is a photographic series that he
completed in 2013, exhibiting it in Anna Pappas Gallery in Melbourne and the
Queensland Centre for Photography in 2014, and in the Singapore Fringe Festival
in 2016. It is now Perth’s turn to view these hauntingly beautiful
images. Ricochet is comprised of images of children and still life
objects. Each is beautifully lit in against an inky background.
Accompanying these are two dark landscapes, each with a foreground habitat; an
anthill and a hideout. A video work from this series will also be on display.
The
lack of background detail, the unadorned black clothing, and Christophe’s
choice of subject matter, all combine to create timeless images. This is
perhaps an unrealistic portrayal of contemporary youth, with today’s clutter of
toys and technology. These are wistful, poetic memories of that time in
childhood where you have newfound freedoms, days filled with curiosity and
adventure, and the angst of adolescence is still some time away. Individually,
these photographs attempt to capture those fleeting moments from childhoods
past, the mesmerising time the ocean is first heard in a seashell, or the
simplicity of placing a thorn on a nose to conjure a dragon or perhaps a rhino.
As
Alasdair Foster noted, “It is an age of becoming. A voyage already begun;
the maternal haven to stern and the churn of adolescence still to come. It is a
time when the brain is plastic; knowledge is sketchy but tacked together with
the rich embroidery of the imagination. These are the dog days before puberty.”
Like
the ricochet of a bullet, or the skipping of a stone over water, these images
bounce between different childhood experiences. From finding the treasures of a
mother of pearl button, the skeletal remains of a frog, or the brilliant
feathers on a dead parrot bejewelled in droplets of water, to watching a pair
of snails mating, or building a hideout from branches and leaves, these are the
experiences that open our eyes to the wonder of the world, the start of
comprehending life and death, finding beauty in small places, and delighting in
boundless imagination. This is the preparation for adulthood, where sadly the
wonder and enchantment found in the everyday diminishes. I do not see
these as portraits, or even descriptions of the artist’s own childhood
memories, but rather, a set of keys to open the past for all viewers.
