Trent Parke: Monument

The European debut exhibition of Magnum photographer Trent Parke’s new work, Monument, is currently on show at Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol (3 Oct – 22 Dec 2024), organised with Bristol Photo Festival as a part of the 2024 festival programme.

In Monument, Trent brings together images produced over a 25-year period taken on the streets of Sydney and Adelaide, Australia, creating a portal through which we witness the disintegration of the universe. Stanley Barker has produced a landmark publication of the work, presenting Monument as a single filmic narrative.

Trent Parke’s landmark publication Monument is a portal through which we bear witness to the disintegration of the universe over 294 expertly printed pages.

The monolithic publication is bound in leather bearing totemic coordinates to the planet Earth, blind stamped end sheets, black sprayed edges, and a loose steel plaque, that once removed, leaves the volume without language.

When Trent Parke moved to Sydney from a small Australian country town, his first impression was of the sheer volume of people. He would grab his camera and go out exploring at every opportunity, fascinated by the endless processions.

At rush hour, he watched as the city workers moved in a great mass, all walking the great conveyer belt of life. In a trance-like state, treading the same path day after day, week after week, year after year… clocking on, clocking off, all under the spell of the city. Parke would stand on the edge of the wave, on the outside of a new world, looking in. As if watching a newly discovered species.

“At night I would watch the eclipse of moths, millions of them constantly circling the lights of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. At the same time, on my balcony, a miniature performance played out around the light above my head. The moths inevitably and without resistance were drawn to their ultimate demise. Spiralling out of control, like small spaceships caught in a tractor beam. Lured and blinded by the bright white light, they were taken out by hundreds of birds swooping in to snatch them from the air… spiders sat waiting on their webs. Built with precise coordinates across the face of the lights, they captured the hapless tiny creatures that slipped through. If any miraculously managed to survive that onslaught, they continued on, driven towards the flame, intoxicated by those burning hot light globes. Then suddenly an electrical charge in the still air. A small puff of smoke. Gone. Instant disintegration of a life form. Another blip in the universe. Another small spacecraft colliding with the blazing sun.”- Trent Parke

 

Thinking like an Island
Gabriele Chiapparini + Camilla Marrese
Book concept and design by Tiffany Jones
Overlapse, September 2024
Softcover, 224 pages across four integrated books (two sized 17×10.5 and two sized 8.4×22 cm), 193 ills.
22 x 17 cm
RRP £48

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