MATTHEW SLEETH Opfikon is Matthew Sleeth’s most seductive book of photographs to date. Designed by acclaimed Melbourne designer Fabio Ongarato, the large format and typography of Opfikon reference Swiss poster design. The images in the book, photographed in an apparently idyllic outer suburb of Zurich called Opfikon, initially dazzle and enchant us with their storybook charm. Dappled leaves, horses in stables, primary coloured children’s furniture, a plethora of gnomes, crisp winter skies and sun filled summery days. A life of precise order and harmony is presented. Yet a certain menace…. → More details

home + away
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW SLEETH Edited by Helen Frajman home+away is a unique twin book set of photographs which are both light hearted and deeply serious. away is a series of images made when the photographer was out of Australia and suggests that mix of excitement and alienation which travel brings. The photographs in home were taken around Australia and are of a more familiar terrain, with the everyday rubbing up against the strange and the iconic to convey a highly individual take on home. Published by M.33, Melbourne 2002 2 volumes / 48 pages…. → More details

TOUR OF DUTY: WINNING HEARTS AND MINDS IN EAST TIMOR
MATTHEW SLEETH Matthew Sleeth’s book of photographs, Tour of Duty constitutes a significant and sustained visual investigation into the international presence in East Timor immediately following the Independence ballot.It must primarily be viewed in the context of the plethora of images which have been published and broadcast over the period of Australia’s participation and which indeed have contributed to our national understanding of this involvement. What we mostly saw in our press and on TV was either the genuinely abject plight of the East Timorese on the one hand and…. → More details

The Bank Book
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAX CREASY, PETER MILNE, MATTHEW SLEETH and DANIELLE THOMPSON In July 2001, when “The Bank” was being filmed in Melbourne, its producers invited 4 photographic artists to hang around the set and engage with the making of the movie. The Bank Book is the wonderful outcome of that process. “Despite its fictional character, film invariably relies on a total “realism of space”. The Bank is no different. It replaces the real world with its own universe of affects. The photographs contained in this book invite us to explore…. → More details

Roaring Days
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MATTHEW SLEETH In this his first book of photographs Sleeth continues to pursue the themes that have long preoccupied him – comradeship, masculinity, romance and alienation. Similarly he continues his intoxication with the expressive qualities of light and shadow. However Roaring Days suggests a departure for Sleeth from the more traditional photo essay form into a more fluid, more loosely structured poetic narrative. Central to Roaring Days are the popular earlier series ‘Cox and Rizzetti Foundry’, ‘Boys’ and ‘Silvers Circus’, but woven around these core works are seemingly…. → More details

Cuba Que Bola
TANIA JOVANOVIC “How could I not succumb to those cinematic streets, the peeling paint, those ghostly limousines, that music which wove its way into every frame, the old fashioned atmosphere redolent of grace, of variety, of a time before mass consumption, and above all those relaxed and vivacious people of every shape and hue? Each image seemed to share in a song of community, of zest, of life lived….This collection of photographs does not aim to present a comprehensive or definitive view of Cuba. It is one person’s encounter with…. → More details