Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2015

Thomas Kellner: genius loci
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
August 22 - September 20, 2015
Ballarat, Australia

"Photographers or their work will also visit from China, France, Malta and elsewhere, including German artist Thomas Kellner with his eye-bending architectural deconstructions." Brisbane Times 20 August 2015

“The same as his countryman and predecessor in the Urals, Georg Wilhelm Henning, Kellner reconstructs the customary world so that it stays in movement and continually delivers new perspectives today and in the future as well.” (Irina Chmyrewa)

This project deals in an artistic-photographical manner with two important industrial areas in Germany and Russia, which are liked to each other through the common history of industrial culture. I’m talking of my hometown Siegen and two of the biggest cities of Russia, Yekaterinburg and Perm.
There is something that scarcely anybody knows: Yekaterinburg and Perm were founded by the native of Siegen, Georg Wilhelm Henning. Georg Wilhelm de Gennin , as he is called in Russia, October 11th 1676 till April 12th 1750, was a German born officer and artificer, who was invited from Peter the Great to Russia because of having an outstanding knowledge in metallurgy. In the 1720ies he founded the first mining schools in Russia, travelled to Europe to promote specialists in mining and built new plants in the Urals, which developed in a minimum of time to one of the most important economic and educational centre: Yekaterinburg and Perm.
In 2013 I followed the traces of Henning and photographed important enterprises in Germany and Russia to show their similarity, namely the processing of steel and metal. As result there emerged a series about the industrial architecture in the Siegerland and the Urals, that presents the heretofore little known relation between these industrial areas.

„The architecture is similar to a full stop which completes the artistic process and at the same time is the starting point for the observer's new artistic journey - that is what Kellner does.” (Irina Chmyrewa)
 

Prints from genius loci are available at my galleries, check out pricing for the  prints >>>

Berkovic, A., 2015.Genius Loci. In: Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Core Program Catalogue 2015, pp. 22-23.

And thank you to Jeff Moorfoot for selecting my work genius loci for the core program at the 6th Ballarat International Foto Biennale