Bio
Rebecca Najdowski is an artist, researcher, and educator based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Her work engages with the material and political implications of representing nature through photographic technologies. For over ten years she has used materials like gelatin silver and chromogenic photographic paper, 35 mm educational slides, overhead projectors, and 3D scanners — often counter to their intended use — to make artworks that offer alternative modes to habitual ways of seeing, and sensing, more-than-human nature. By focusing on optics, light, minerals, time, and chemical and digital interactions, her projects harness the essential components of photomedia in order to expose the conditions of representation. Both embracing and critiquing imaging technologies, Rebecca’s work has addressed desert ecology, botanical specimens, natural phenomena like the sun, geothermal activity, and rain, and imaginings of the universe. Rebecca’s work has been presented internationally, including Aperture Gallery (New York), Athens Digital Art Festival (Greece), and FORMAT Festival (United Kingdom). She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and an MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Installation Art to Brazil. Her practice has been supported by a fellowship with the Center for Creative Photography (Arizona) and through residencies at Banff Centre (Canada); the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University (New York); and at Kala Art Institute (California).
Rebecca was raised on the traditional lands of the Pueblo people in northern New Mexico and currently lives and works on unceded Wurundjeri land.
CV
Education
2021 PhD, Visual Art
Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne
2010 Master of Fine Arts, Studio Art
California College of the Arts, San Francisco
2004 Bachelor of University Studies
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Solo Exhibitions
2022 Deep Learning the Climate Emergency, Fed Square Digital Facade, Melbourne, Australia
2022 Ambient Pressure, Belfast Photo Festival, Botanic Gardens, Belfast, Northern Ireland
2020 Inverted Landscapes, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
2018 Interference Pattern, Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham, Australia (two-person)
2018 Interference Pattern, Perth Centre for Photography, Perth, Australia (two-person)
2017 Give Them Distance, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne, Australia
2014 Desert Pictures, Lionel Rombach Gallery, Tucson, AZ, USA
2014 untitled (proposition), Steinfeld Warehouse, Tucson, AZ, USA
2013 Above/Below, S.H.E.D. Projects, Oakland, CA, USA
2010 Spectra, Hyde Street Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA
Group Exhibitions and Screenings
2022
States of Disruption, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia
Return to Nature, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, Australia
Athens Photo Festival, Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece
2021
The Censored Exhibition, Copenhagen Photo Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
2020
Encontros da Imagem — International Photography Festival, Galeria do Paço da UMinho, Braga, Portugal
Posthuman PUBLICS, Project Space, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
2019
CURRENTS 2019: Reimagined Histories | Rewritten Futures, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA, USA
The Qualities of LIGHT, The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, USA
Beyond Boundaries, Aperture Gallery, New York, NY, USA
2018
New Psychedelics, Humble Arts Foundation NY, online
The Family of No Man, Cosmos Arles Books, Arles, France
I Can See for Miles, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia
2017
A Field-Guide to the Stars, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Ballarat, Australia
#postfuture journey / Athens Digital Art Festival, Athens International Airport, Greece
FORMAT Festival: Habitat, Derby, England
2016
Alien Terrain, Peephole Cinema, San Francisco, CA, USA
Victory, Gaffa Photo Festival, Gaffa, Sydney, Australia
2015
New Acquisitions, The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, USA
Talking to Strangers, Simultan, Timisoara, Romania
Videograma: Territorio y Ciudad, UJTL, Bogota, and Barrio Granada, Cali, Colombia
Digital Native Film Festival, The Front, New Orleans, LA, USA
Were the Eye Not Sunlike, ACRE TV, Chicago, IL, USA
Radical Color, Newspace Center for Photography, Portland, OR, USA
2014
Fauna, Smith Andersen North Gallery, San Anselmo, CA, USA
Night Contact, Brighton Photo Biennial, Brighton, England
Set in Motion: Video Art & Experimental Film, Purdue University Fountain Gallery, Lafayette, IN, USA
Trestle Video Art Screening, Trestle Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA
X Media Art Monographic Show, Festival Internacional de la Imagen, Manizales, Colombia
Black Noise, Podium Dolhuis, Dordrecht, Netherlands
Return of the Winter Wrens, Nightingale Gallery, East Oregon University, La Grande, OR, USA
2013
Crystal Palace, Center for the Digital Arts, SUNY Westchester Com College, Peekskill, NY, USA
Faculty Exhibition, University of Arizona Art Museum, Tucson, AZ, USA
Wood Anniversary, The Art Gym, Marylhurst University, Marylhurst, OR, USA
Video Window, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR, USA
Thinking Like the Universe, Hatch Gallery, Oakland, CA, USA
2012
InLight, 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA, USA
Crystal Palace, ArtSpace, New Haven, CT, USA
New Codes* / Athens Digital Art Festival, Athens, Greece
Kaleidoscope, ArtPadSF, Hungryman Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA
2011
Hypothesis, The Lab, San Francisco, CA, USA
ArtPadSF, Robert Berman Gallery / E6, San Francisco, CA, USA
2010
Peripheral Vision, Togonon Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA
Golden State, RVCA, San Francisco, CA, USA
Everything Never Goes Away, Lost Coast Culture Machine, Ft. Bragg, CA, USA
MFA Thesis Exhibition, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, USA
Hearsay of the Sun, Queens Nails Projects, San Francisco, CA, USA
Groundswell, Kala Gallery, Berkeley, CA, USA
Curation
2021 The Image Looks Back, RMIT Gallery, PHOTO 2020 International Festival of Photography, Melbourne, Australia (co-curators: Dr Alison Bennett, Dr Shane Hulbert, Professor Daniel Palmer)
2019 To The Moon and Back, Ballarat Municipal Observatory and Museum, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Ballarat, Australia (co-curated with Dr Colleen Boyle)
2017 A Field Guide to the Stars, Ballarat Municipal Observatory and Museum, Ballarat International Foto Biennale, Ballarat, Australia
Awards / Fellowships / Residencies
2019 Banff Centre Artist Residency “Digital Promises”, Banff, Canada
2013-2015 Artist Fellow, The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ
2014 Artist Residency, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA
2013 Artist Residency, Signal Fire, Montana
2013 Artist Residency, Institute for Electronic Arts, Alfred University, New York
2012 Artist Residency, Signal Fire, Oregon, USA
2010-2011 Fulbright Fellowship, Installation Art, Brazil
2010-2011 Artist Residency, CAPACETE, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Press
2022 The Voice of Nature: Rebecca Najdowski, ARTDOC Magazin
2021 Future Refresh: A Studio Visit with Rebecca Najdowski, interview with Kate Neave, part of “Unearthed: Eco-visionaries,” OpenLab
2021 Rebecca Najdowski, interview with Matt Dunn, Tending to the Garden
2019 Ambient Pressure, Cat Lachowskyj, LensCulture
2019 Weathering Photographs: Ambient Pressure by Rebecca Najdowski, Ciel Hernandez, Lomography Magazine
2015 Meet the Contemporary Photographers Experimenting with “Radical Color”, Maddie Crum, The Huffington Post
2015 Electrifying Photograms Made from Desert Minerals, Flora, and Fauna, Ellyn Kail, Feature Shoot
2013 Signal Fire Heats of Artists’ Connection to Nature, “Wood Anniversary” review by John Motley, The Oregonian
2011 Photograms by Rebecca Najdowski, Juxtapoz Magazine online
2011 Moving Pictures: Rebecca Najdowski Reflects on Her Fulbright in Brazil, Simon Hodgson, California College of the Arts news
2010 Cameraless “pictures”, “Peripheral Vision” review by Kenneth Baker, SF Gate
2010 Illusive and Stunning, “Peripheral Vision” review by Parker Tilghman, Art Slant
2010 Kala Gallery’s Rising Tide, Groundswell review by DeWitt Cheng, East Bay Express
2010 Pay Attention, CCA MFA exhibition review by JD Beltrane, SF Gate
Collections
The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona, USA
The Fidelity Art Collection, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Bogotá (MAC), Bogotá, Colombia
Research and Writing
Najdowski, Rebecca (2021), ‘Indeterminate: Flora, 3D scanning and the instability of data’, Journal of Environmental Media, 2:1, p. 131–145.
Najdowski, Rebecca (2020), Inverted Landscapes: Photomedia and the More-than-representational, University of Melbourne, PhD Dissertation.
Najdowski, Rebecca (2018), ‘Surfacing’, Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, 45, p. 11-17.
Vuorinen, Jane and Rebecca Najdowski (2018), ‘Surface Tension: Material Intra-Actions within Photography’, RUUKU: studies in artistic research, 9, online.
Najdowski, Rebecca (2016), ‘The Analogue: Photography as an Analogy for Earth Processes’, Fusion Journal, 10, p. 267–278.
© Rebecca Najdowski 2022