“Brett Canét-Gibson, Perth photographer, writer, graphic designer and working flâneur, has coined a word to describe himself: he’s a tarriologist—one who tarries, or postpones leaving a place.

The works in light enters upside down are selected from a ‘visual diary’ comprising street portraits, landscapes and still lifes he’s made in the area around his home in the Swan Valley. In the studio, he brings his graphic design skills to bear, combining his images with fragments of his own poetry and prose, floating words, and found ephemeral images that haunt him.

Canét-Gibson’s urban vignettes express both his alertness to beauty that others may overlook, and his sensitivity to the shape and meaning of words of many languages. His juxtaposed images are subtly affecting expressions of visual wit.

For portraits, Canét-Gibson has a national reputation. His portraits are made using natural light, a portable backdrop and people he has just met on the street. Canét-Gibson uses the city as his casting agency and the sidewalk as his studio. The artist’s own integrity enables him to present the almost-unbearable truth of the protracted human gaze.

Brett Canét-Gibson has a motto for what he does: ‘one camera, two shoes, infinite possibilities’. Yet he tarries—stirred by the possibility of meaning, where most of us would pass, oblivious. ‘I stand smudged and silent’, he writes. His work is the elegant, affecting residue of his presence.”

—Dr Sarah Engledow | Visiting Fellow - Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University; Curator & Writer

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Poetry, text, graphic design & photography | Brett Canét-Gibson

Found ephemera | Various sources - full details are provided on Artist Statements

Video | Acid Flicks