Rory King’s work sits in the hybrid space between documentary practice and personal narratives fleshed out through an evocative and ambiguous visual discourse. Primarily shooting his work in black and white, and driven extensively by traditional photographic techniques, King is interested in the dualities and juxtapositions of human experience, the unseen personalities living on the fringes of society, the tensions between nostalgia, melancholia, the sublime, and our psychological landscapes.
King received the National Gallery of Australia Summer Art Scholarship for photography in 2011, was named one of the up-and-coming artists of 2018 by Vogue, Australia and has recently been awarded the Denis Diderot grant and residency opportunity at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France, 2020. He has shown strongly across his early career in group exhibitions, most recently in G L O S S (2017) at Stairwell Gallery, Could this all be it? (2017) at Cold Cuts Gallery, Sydney, Take Shape (2018), Huw Davies Gallery, Canberra, Degenerate & Six (2018), Degenerate & Six Gallery, Canberra, and ‘Soul & Mortar / Art! Not Apart’ (2019), Nishi Gallery, Canberra. King was also awarded the PhotoAccess ‘Dark Matter’ Residency in 2018.
In 2018 he presented his work in, 'A Safer Place to Scream' for the annual Clyde & Co Art Award in Sydney, Australia, his first solo show, ‘Burnt Fingers, Broken Nose’ at PhotoAccess, Manuka, and his most recent solo body of work, ‘Hero With A Thousand Faces’ (2019) at Tributary Projects.
Concerned with modes of fabricating and disseminating both intimate and grand narratives, King’s images fluctuate through the pairing of interior and exterior spaces, which metaphorically serve as a reflection of our expansive psychological mindsets.
King graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art majoring in Photomedia at National Art School in 2017.
rory.king.art@gmail.com