Artist Statement/ Biography

Objects, spaces and events that occur in separate times and places can coexist psychologically. Svetlana Bailey’s work supposes this coexistence can be reconciled with photographs, which, although normally fixed to particular times, locations and stories, are able to travel, in boxes or as mind images, on overlapping currents. Svetlana returns to places, of imaginative influence, passed, feared, dreamed of, circling in the collection and recollection of images that she has or has not taken. Surrounded by images and objects, Svetlana collects, arranges, revalues, resizes, photographs, prints, and rephotographs. Often contemplating the question, “what would have happened if”, through staged photographs she tries out this thought. Photography, video and printmaking make it tangible, although only through combinations of simulacra.

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Svetlana Bailey is an MFA graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and spent the summer of 2016 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She was born in St Petersburg, studied in Germany and Australia and currently lives and works in New York. Svetlana is represented by Artereal Gallery in Sydney, has exhibited at Clamp Art NYC, had solo exhibitions around Australia, is a recipient of the New Work Grant and the ArtStart program from Australia Council, was published in Aint-Bad Magazine, Photographer’s Quarterly, Feature Shoot, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is held in the Australian Government’s Artbank collection and the collection of the Queensland Centre for Photography.