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About Simone
Biography

Simone Douglas is a contemporary artist whose work spans installation, photography, sculpture, video, and durational site-specific projects. As an artist, advocate, and educator, she is deeply committed to highlighting the role of art in shaping our understanding of our collective future.
 
Predominantly known for her photographic work, Douglas has dedicated her practice to land art. Her current project, Ice Boat, will emerge as a 120-foot-long ice sculpture situated on Wilyakali land in Australia. As a poetic engagement with the site's history and natural ecosystem, Ice Boat aims to highlight art's potential to participate in ecological regeneration and community storytelling. In a time marked by urgent environmental crises and the growing need for cross-cultural understanding, Ice Boat showcases the potential art’s role in fostering regeneration, dialogue, resilience and offers collaborative solutions across communities.

Through the intersection of art, technology, and environmentalism, her work seeks to explore art’s relationship with and responsibility to people, land, and community to consider the following: How can art engage with historical and contemporary narratives around land, culture, and climate? How can it contribute to ecological regeneration through sustainable practices?

 
Douglas’ previous work centers of themes of light, perception, and transformation. In 2018, her work, Surrender (Collision), was exhibited alongside leading contemporary photographic artists including William Henry Fox Talbot, May Ray, Låszló Moholy- Nagy, Christian Marclay, Thomas Ruff, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, in Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph, curated by Geoffrey Batchen at the Lovett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand. 
 
She has been curated into international exhibitions including, Recent Acquisitions for the Photography Collection, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; Aberrations, The Photographers Gallery, London, United Kingdom; Sites of Knowledge, Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, United States; Antipodean Emanations: Cameraless Photographs from Australia and New Zealand, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, Australia; Portrait of my Mother, Galerie Matisse, Institute François, London, United Kingdom; Sequester, Australian Embassy Gallery, Washington DC, United States; Sun to Sun, Christopher Bucklow & Simone Douglas. Artereal, Rozelle, Australia; Light Works, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; Stand in Landscape, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China; Sight Seeing, CAFA Gallery, Beijing, China; Minimal, The Australian Centre For Photography, Sydney, Australia; Photography & Place, Australian landscape photography 1970’s Until Now, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; Photography is Dead! Long Live Photography!, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia.

Her work has also been featured in international contemporary anthologies and major publications, including ArtForum, Conveyor, Blind Spot, Photofile, Art + Australia, Creative Camera and (not only) black + white. Her collections include: The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom; The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; New South Wales Department of Education, Sydney, Australia; State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

In addition to her artistic practice, Douglas has curated for the Getty Conservation Institute, the Australian Museum, the Pingyao International Festival, and the Auckland Festival of Photography. Alongside her industry engagements, her role as a professor at Parsons School of Design reflects her dedication to guiding both emerging and established artists as they navigate their careers with purpose, helping them shape their work into vehicles for social impact. Through teaching Independent Studio 2 and Waste and Justice, she encourages critical engagement with social and environmental issues, empowering students to expand their artistic practice beyond aesthetics and contribute to broader discussions about art’s role in society.

© Simone Douglas Studio, 2024

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