How did the CCTV paintings evolve?
The earliest law enforcement photographs of prisoners date back to the 1840s in Belgium. The modern mugshot, featuring both full face and profile views in standardised lighting and consistent identification features, was developed by Alphonse Bertillon in Paris in 1888.
Between 1910 and 1930, police in Australia allowed criminals to dress and pose as they wished for their mugshots. Some dressed in stylish suits, took confident stances, and at times there were even smiles. It was believed this approach made criminals more accurately identifiable for law enforcement purposes.
Names, arrest numbers and other identification details were handwritten on the photographs. Due to their utilitarian function, they acquired the visible traces of time, including fades, creases, stains and casual jottings, etc.
Mugshots serve a social function: the identification and documentation of individual criminals. Australian mugshots from the 1910s to 1930s however, included this curious bonus feature - the freedom of expression of the subject. This became the basis of a series of works on paper that I began around 2020.
A year or so later, I chanced upon internal surveillance camera images from Australian banks dating from the 1970s and 1980s. What intrigued me most was the tension between the authority of the observer via the camera, and the subject’s attempts to subvert that authority.
These images prompted me to reflect on my own experiences with CCTV footage. I live in a low-rise apartment block with a car park below, monitored by surveillance cameras. Occasionally, cars are broken into or items are stolen. For a period of time, it was my responsibility to access the footage and provide police with the relevant recordings. The reactions of those whose property had been stolen when viewing the footage, was often, not surprisingly, strongly emotional.
CCTV cameras are a deterrent, although they are primarily designed for identification. As such, recordings can serve as evidence in a court of law, with the capacity to decisively influence the trajectory of an individual’s life.
At present, I am using footage from the apartment’s CCTV system as the basis for a new series of paintings. The cameras surveil locations I am intimately familiar with. My interest lies in the tension between the authority of the surveillance camera’s gaze, and its subject, the outsider, who has arrived at their moment of portrayal through their own complex sequence of circumstances.
My work is not in seeking to pass judgment on questions of criminality, morality, or justice. Rather, it’s exploring the tension between the social and cultural structures that sustain us as social beings, and the ambiguities of human subjectivity.
This exploration is expressed in the work primarily through the use of contrast. The compositions are planned and structured, yet they remain open-ended enough to allow uncertainty to emerge. Each composition has its own organic evolution and over time, and they can change considerably. The record of these revisions and reconsiderations is left visible within the paintings. Although layers of history may be scoured back to create space for further development, they are seldom removed entirely. The history of each painting is an integral part of its evolution.
The palette consists largely of earthy tones, allowing for contrasts of warmth and coolness, and light and dark. The application of paint can range from heavy, fluid, and physically expressive to restrained, delicate, and exacting — or anywhere in between. At times, the paint is so faint and abraded that it’s barely perceptible; at others, it appears hard-edged, definitive, and full of confidence. This oscillation between material certainty and fragility underlines the conceptual premise of the work: the coexistence of order and ambiguity.
While the paintings are structured, they always retain space for emotional resonance to emerge, whether that be unease, fear, empathy, joy, confusion, or any other affective state. The paintings operate as an arena where the material and the psychological converge — where the physical act of making becomes inseparable from the conceptual exploration of human experience.