Gabrielle Connole is a photographer and visual artist. 

Since first discovering 35mm film through my mum in the Australian desert, I have had a feeling that my whole consciousness is drawing me towards the camera. My multidisciplinary art practice spans photography, light sculpture, video, sound and public art programs. I refer to these mediums when examining themes of girlhood, womanhood, belonging, and lineage. Having grown up in regional Australia, I often choose to create work on journeys through remote and personally significant settings. My dependable quest for connection finds me immersing in faraway locations from the Australian Western Desert to the tiny Irish town of Kilfenora, County Clare.

I am a relational artist who encourages unique  interactions that lead to a state of possibility and encounter. I have cultivated a practice that invites subtle moments of transformation for myself and the audience. When exhibiting work I create a fantastical narrative that adopts a combination of personally meaningful materials like roller-skates, neon, projection, dancing, Roy Orbison music and 35mm film.

My work feels into the tensions of our present day social context and it’s limitations on opportunities of meaningful interhuman relations. One way I respond to this is to invite rural girls between the ages of 10-12 to participate in my free photographic workshop, Girls Have Stamina. The workshop slows the portrait process down and introduces girls to the magic of 35mm film photography. I am inspired to celebrate the fierceness and uniqueness of rural girls and to create a space for girls to tap into their sense of pride in who they are in the world. My practice is a social inquiry that begins the moment I pack the car and take off; it’s the interactions, where I sleep, times of failure, moments of divine synchronicity, snacks from the corner store, detours, conversations in electrical shops, photographing, packing up, and driving 1000km’s home… The art for me is interpersonal, therefore found in many instances that emerge along the way.   

My practice is a graceful interception of my experience in the western structures that impact equality and authentic connection.

My greatest aim is an enriching space of exchange.