DOMESTIC is grounded in research on the food production industry, and focuses on relationships between humans and animals, eaters and eaten.
The project stems from a batch of found 16mm agricultural and advertising footage shot in America in the 1960’s; a poignant time for industrial and technological change in agriculture. With labor and land being increasingly replaced by chemical applications and machine advancements, commercial farms were morphing larger in size and fewer in number. Agriculture continues to chase its tail.
As the found 16mm film aged over time, portions became pierced by the 16mm projector needing to be snipped off bit by bit. Hand printing these isolated strips in the darkroom form a basis of DOMESTIC’s visual narrative, with positive to negative and negative to positive transitioning. The process trajected towards photographing farm work in rural NSW, Australia, to documenting manufactured food waste in London, UK; found human x-rays, scientific imagery and site specific installation accumulate, to explore the body as a “coop”.
This book work looks specifically at some of our closest companion species, livestock and poultry: and how they experience gene silencing, mutations and behavioural change throughout evolution, and through living in close proximity with humans.
DOMESTIC poses important questions around what biological adaptations may occur in the future for these codependent relationships, and features excerpts of conversations between Katrina Stamatopoulos and Martin Johnsson, Quantitative Geneticist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Studies.
Cover image: Diseased cow, likely caused by parramatta grass (2020) c-type hand print installed in Dungog, NSW, Australia 2024
Found 16mm film still of turkeys (America circa 1960’s), batch purchase from eBay 2012
Spring burn off, Mirannie, NSW, Australia (2012) hand printed as a positive c-type 2024
Paddock rotation, Dungog, NSW, Australia 2024
Skinning from home kill, Dungog, NSW, Australia 2022
Checking Rupert, silver gelatin print, Dungog, NSW, Australia 2024
Found 16mm film still of pigs (America circa 1960’s), pierced by 16mm projector, London UK 2024
Frozen pheasant giblet, savoured from the pheasant bought over by Benjamin after Christmas, London, UK 2020
Found 16mm film stills of pigs (America circa 1960’s), c-type hand print installed with broken fence element, Dungog, NSW, Australia 2024
Unidentified fish, Billingsgate market 2018, c-type hand print installed at Billingsgate market, London, UK 2024
Manish’s infected mosquito bite, c-type hand print on expired Kodak paper, London, UK 2023
Katrina Stamatopoulos is an Australian artist based in London.
Her research fixates on questioning the representation of photography, and its meaning as object and collective form. She is interested in consumption, and making connections between food and images; their digestion and representation, source and distribution, and entwining as daily process.
Katrina’s work manifests through her making process. Working with or without a camera, she often works in the darkroom with found or expired paper stocks, practices hand retouching, bookmaking, facilitates chemigrams and makes pinhole cameras (placing them covertly in public). Found material is often her starting point, and can range from objects, X-rays, 16mm film and food waste, to discarded photographic materials and negatives found at commercial labs in London.
After finishing an MFA at Goldsmiths in London, 2020, she has since then, co-founded the project space Equivalentbehaviour in North London with Storquestudios, and has exhibited Internationally. Katrina is a Project Manager of the London Alternative Photography Collective.
Exhibitions include: Built Photography, Museum of Australian Photography (MAPH), Melbourne (2024), Symbiosis 1 + 2, A Hundred Years Gallery/ Four Corners, London (2024) Transmutation, The Margate School, Margate (2023) Un/Sense, Christie’s, London (2022) the MFA Graduate Show, Goldsmiths, London, (2020) SURGE, the Courtauld East Wing Biennial, at Somerset House, London (2019) and Altered States, St Johns Crypt, London (2019).
Solo Exhibitions include Aeterna, a bi-personal exhibition with Lorena Florio at Mucho Mas!, Turin, Italy (2024), and Preying for Modesty (Meatheads), PhotoAccess, Canberra, Australia (2021).
In 2024, Katrina was awarded the DYPC grant from Arts Council England, which assisted in the undertaking of a Residency at Tenedou Space in Athens and the production of her book project DOMESTIC.
Copyright © Katrina Stamatopoulos, all rights reserved.
