Julie Shiels

Making Strange

April 5th – 27th, 2024

Making Strange is a snapshot of images captured when the selfie function on a mobile phone is turned away from the self and directed at the world around us.

When this popular and often narcissistic mode of photography is upended, the familiar becomes strange, drawing attention to the overlooked qualities of things and places and relationships between them.

Cocking a snook at two photographic conventions — the high-tech, architectural hero shot devoid of people and the low fi selfie that puts humans at the centre — this exhibition focuses on the built environment.

Eschewing big technologies, drone shots and conventions such as scale, dimensionality, perspective and context, these images of interior and exterior spaces and the details of surfaces aim to slow things down.

Making Strange invites an engagement with these structures and their material qualities as they are perceived by the selfie-lens, and not as they are known.

Like many of Julie Shiels’ photographic and sculptural projects, this exhibition engages with public space and encourages us to look more carefully at the world around us, especially at things hidden in plain sight.