Geoff Kleem 03 -31 May 2025

The Cut Line

Fact and Fiction.  Waucoba was made in Death Valley, California – a banal and alien landscape where reference points are disconnected. A place drawn from our mythic imagination as observational fact, historical spectacle or pop cultural fiction. A place more easily reconstructed from photographic and cinema culture rather than from actually knowing it.  Our understanding of and our relationship with this place owes much to a rich vein of photographic and film culture in regard to its creation in the mind of the viewer as a remote, strange and metaphysical place – a place both real and imagined as real. 

‘If the usual questions asked of works are ‘what do images do?’ and ‘how do they function?’, then Kleem’s practice suggests that a third question may be more relevant today: ‘what do images themselves want?’ As one writer has claimed, the answer is usually simple. Like us, images want what they lack: connections with the world beyond their frames and utility. Geoff Kleem’s images would seem to agree. Our concern is no longer with the design of images, but rather what designs they have for us.’                             

Anthony Gardner. Art and Australia.

Kleem’s work is held by most state and national art galleries and has received numerous accolades. With an extensive exhibition history he has covered much ground and influenced a generation of photographers. He has exhibited widely in the USA, including at PS1 New York, Chicago and MAK Museum Vienna as well as exhibitions in Australia at Artspace Sydney, Institute of Contemporary Art Perth, Monash University Gallery, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, University of Queensland Art Museum, Heide Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney)