There is a mesmerizing anxiety produced by contact with the abject and the uncanny, the awareness of a scene, haunted by degradation and terror, which is insistently fascinating, which suspends time and freezes the spectator into immobility yet, in the final analysis, remains safely removed from reality. Peter Wollen, 1997

My practice is influenced by the history of photography as a form of investigation, evidence and categorization. Addressing concepts of the forensic aesthetic, my focus is visual aftermath of the abandoned, decayed and destroyed. Intending to engage the viewer in an exercise of investigative analysis, each scene acts as a clue to absent meanings and prior events. The isolated space, void of human presence and the idea of surveillance are part of my process.

Fire Zone is a documentation of retail, office and industrial spaces damaged by fire in 2008. Two warehouses, which housed a dry cleaner's and tile business, were completely destroyed. The cause of the fire is unknown. I am drawn to the scene of the crime and all that it can suggest, the presence and absence of meaning, occasionally banal yet overwhelming with its aura. Fire Zone represents what is left behind in the wake of a tragic event and highlights the aesthetics of disaster, emphasizing it as an expression of place, memory and loss.

Francesca Rosa

Francesca Rosa is a Brisbane based, Australian artist who graduated with a MA in Photomedia from the College of Fine Art, University of NSW in 2004. Rosa has exhibited nationally and her work has been collected by the Queensland Art Gallery, Daryl Hewson and privately. Forthcoming projects for 2009 include a solo exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography, and her participation in Queensland Art Gallery’s exhibition 150 Years: Photography in Queensland from the Collection. Rosa has been selected for the 2009 Wilson HTM National Art Prize, Churchie National Art Prize and Moreton Bay Art Awards. More recently, her work was included in Temperature 2: New Queensland Art, at the Museum of Brisbane. In 2008, Rosa completed a solo exhibition at the Queensland Centre for Photography and was a finalist in the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize and CLIP Award. More of Francesca Rosa’s work can be seen at her website.