Patricia Casey was a finalist in the Chippendale New World Art Prize 2014 and winner of the Head On Photographic Portrait Prize in 2006. She has been shortlisted for a number of prestigious art prizes including, the National Photography Prize in 2010 and the Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2002 and 2005.  She completed her Master of Visual Arts (Research) degree in 2009 and Master of Studio Arts in 2006 at the University of Sydney. She has received a number of awards and her work is held in major public and private collections. The embroidered photographic works of have been exhibited and collected internationally and throughout Australia.

I question the veracity of photography. It is intrinsically linked with memory and nostalgia. It is an unreliable medium in relation to ‘truth’. I draw attention to the fragile, slippery nature of memory itself.  My photographs are often out of focus or manipulated.  By using embroidery I open up a triangular dialogue between stitching (a form of drawing in the way I use it), the photograph and the viewer. I have a particular interest in the struggle between absence and presence existing in a photograph. My images are open-ended and have a similar tension between beauty and unease.

The strange marriage of materials emerges from my conceptual concerns. I have an interest in interior worlds and intimate spaces, memory, imagination, dreams and the unconscious. My work revels in secret worlds and private spaces. The subjects portrayed are caught in a moment of private reverie and are veiled by elements of the natural world. In a combination of portraiture and landscape photography, the familiar is transformed into a dreamlike tableau.