Using the camera on your smartphone, learn how to take compelling portrait photographs incorporating nature. Artist David Charles Collins will take you through the fundamentals of photo composition, as well as share tips and tricks for taking your photographic skills to the next level without the need for expensive equipment.

Participants will meet at FORM Gallery and (weather permitting) walk to adjacent Lake Claremont to capture the natural beauty of this significant suburban wetland.

About David Charles Collins

Born: Perth, Australia, 1988

Lives and works: Sydney, Australia

David Charles Collins’ photographs explore notions of beauty, decadence, control, surrender and catharsis. He frequently depicts himself or various models in performative acts that explore the relationship between humans and the natural world. In 2016 FORM commissioned Collins to create a series of images of flora from the southern Goldfields-Esperance region, his Wild Silence series, which is shown in Metamorphosis, alongside a new body of work, Anima, commissioned in 2024 for Metamorphosis. Inspired by the myth of Apollo and Daphne, these new works were created in bushland at Wilyabrup, outside of Margaret River.

Collins gained a Bachelor of Arts (with Honours) at Curtin University Perth, and graduated with a Masters by Research from Sydney College of the Arts in 2017, specialising in photography and video media. His work has been exhibited across Australia, China, Germany and the UK, including solo shows in London, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, and most recently as part of PHOTO 2024 International Festival, Melbourne. He has been a finalist in major awards including The Blake Art Prize, the William and Winnifred Bowness Photography Prize, and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award. His work is held in collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the University of Western Australia, and in Home of The Arts, Gold Coast, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art and the Western Australian Museum (in collaboration with Tony Albert and Warakurna community).

About Metamorphosis: Artists in collaboration with plants.

FORM Building a State of Creativity presents Metamorphosis: Artists in collaboration with plants.

Inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, this exhibition honours the beguiling magic and transformative power of the natural world. The exhibiting artists have engaged the plant kingdom as co-creators in their work, asking us to reconsider humans' assumed dominance over the environment.

As in Ovid's epic poem, a series of alchemical transformations are apparent in each artist's process, with the exhibition works featuring photography, drawing, textiles, ceramics and jewellery technique.

This exhibition is the fifth in FORM’s Southern Exposure series, celebrating the talent, landscape, and stories of Western Australia's southern regions.

Metamorphosis invites viewers to explore the shifting boundaries we share with nature, but beyond artistic expression, it also serves as an important reminder of the need to protect the diverse and complex ecology of the land on which we are privileged to live.

Metamorphosis continues until Saturday, 13 July 2024.

Participating Artists
David Charles Collins | Elizabeth Edmonds | Sarah Elson | Holly Story | Beverly Thomson

Contact the host of WORKSHOP | Metamorphosis - Botanical Portraiture with David Charles Collins