Dr Izabela Pluta

Dr Izabela Pluta

Senior Lecturer
Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA)
School of Art & Design

Izabela Pluta is an artist and academic with an interest in expanded photographic practice. She completed her undergraduate studies in Fine Art at The University of Newcastle (2002), an MFA at UNSW Art & Design (2009) and has a PhD from the School of the Arts, English and Media at The University of Wollongong (2017).  

Pluta has exhibited widely in Australia. She has undertaken residencies including the inaugural Marrgu Residency at Durrmu Arts Aboriginal Cooperative in Peppimenarti, Northern Territory; Air 3331 Chiyoda, Tokyo; the Australia Council for the Arts Studio in Barcelona; the Cite des Arts International in Paris; The Art and Design Research Institute, University of Ulster in Belfast; Red Gate Gallery in Beijing; and International Art Space Kellerberrin. Grants and awards include from Creative Australia; The Qantas Foundation Contemporary Art Award; the Freedman Foundation Traveling Scholarship for Emerging Artists and the Ian Potter Cultural Grant. A major exhibition of her work was held at UTS Gallery Sydney, titled Blue Distance, in 2014, and in 2019,  Pluta was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales to create a significant new work for 'The National 2019: new Australian art' exhibition. in 2024 was curated into the survey exhibition “Śliczna jest młodość naszego wieku. Foto-albumy 1850-1950” (2023) at the Museum of Warsaw. Other significant museum exhibitions include “Blue Assembly: Oceanic Thinking” at The University of Queensland Art Museum (2022) and her solo presentation of ‘Variable Depth, Shallow Water’ at the Spazju Kreattiv, Malta (2021); and ‘Figures of slippage and oscillation’ at Artspace Sydney (2018). 

In 2012 Pluta recieved a Short Term Mobility Grant (Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations) for a two-week intensive studio project Photomedia: site and context which provided participating students a unique opportunity to develop artwork using the potential of expanded photographic and installation practices in response to the historical and politically loaded Gdańsk shipyard on the Baltic Sea in Poland as part of their Bachelor of Fine Art coursework program. http://gdanskproject.wordpress.com/

Pluta is an artist whose practice has developed a unique visual language of spatial and representational means to signal a different modality of vision. Her work explores the intersection of photography with concepts of time and memory, and questions of place. Conceptually anchored in the effects of globalisation and her own personal experience as a migrant to Australia, Pluta’s creative pursuit seeks to articulate a fluid mode of moving through and being in the world. She works across collage, film-based photography, sculpture, installation and video. Her poetic and multifaceted approach is characterised by processes of fragmentation, dislocation, reconfiguration and embodied fieldwork. These methods disrupt linear narratives of of time- and record-keeping, and, in doing so, challenge historical uses of documents and images as authoritative devices. Pluta is attuned to the complexity of an image’s materiality, and she imbues other mediums with a kind of photographic thinking.

Drawing from a rich array of photographed and found sources — including personal and public archives, oceanic cartography and 20th-century geographic publications — Pluta’s work navigates the subjectivity of experience and existence. From tracing geological changes across deep time to documenting faster changing anthropogenic, cultural, environmental and societal shifts, she considers the plurality of place in an ever-changing world. Grounded in fieldwork, her sustained meditations on the embodied experience of place have led her to explore underwater diving sites such as the recently collapsed geological structure Dwejra Azure Window in Gozo, a small island off Malta, and the mythologised underwater stone structures off the coast of Yonaguni Island, Okinawa, Japan. Pluta’s use of inherently unstable materials, such as light sensitive photo paper and alchemical processes, reflects her awareness of the impermanence and reflexivity of images to operate as both records and a unique ledgers of transience.

More details about recent projects: www.izabelapluta.net

Phone
+61 2 8936 0620
Location
UNSW ART & Design Paddington Campus
  • Books | 2012
    Pluta I, 2012, Photomedia: site and context, Izabela Pluta, Sydney NSW
  • Creative Works (non-textual) | 2023
    Pluta I; Heinlein R, 2023, Nihilartikel, book launch at Perimeter Books, Perimeter Books, 20 January 2023 - 20 January 2023, at: https://www.perimeterbooks.com/collections/perimeter-editions/products/izabela-pluta-nihilartikel
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2022
    Pluta I, 2022, Ascending Air, Unfolding Motion, Radical Slowness, The Lock-Up, 26 March 2022 - 15 May 2022, at: https://thelockup.org.au/radical-slowness/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2022
    Pluta I, 2022, Counter forces, From impulse to action, Bundanon Art Museum, 29 January 2022 - 12 June 2022, at: https://www.bundanon.com.au/whats-on/from-impulse-to-action/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2022
    Pluta I, 2022, Nihilartikel, IZABELA PLUTA: NIHILARTIKEL, The University of Newcastle Galleries, Wattspace, 15 September 2022 - 05 November 2022, medium: photography, expanded, at: https://www.newcastle.edu.au/events/community-and-alumni/watt-space/izabela-pluta-nihilartikel
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2021
    Pluta I, 2021, Iterative composition 1979 (pages 17-18 Australia), Reconfigured/Rediscovered, Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara Arts, 23 January 2021 - 10 April 2021, medium: photography, at: https://photo.org.au/events/reconfigured-rediscovered
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2021
    Pluta I, 2021, Variable depth, shallow water, Variable depth, shallow water, Spazju Kreattiv, 05 March 2021 - 11 April 2021, medium: installation, photography, video, sculpture, at: https://www.kreattivita.org/en/event/variable-depth-shallow-water/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2020
    Pluta I, 2020, Blue spectrum and descent, Measures of Refraction, HOH Journal 01: Disrupt, pp 40-60; Gallery Sally Dan Cuthbert, 03 September 2020 - 27 September 2020, medium: text and cyanotype prints, at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e7ac09683756d18092e0ab6/t/5f583ebbed854302cbf3292f/1599618929158/HOH_Journal_01_Disrupt.pdf
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2020
    Pluta I, 2020, Figures of slippage and oscillation, Melbourne Art Book Fair, Perimeter Books, National Gallery of Victoria, 14 March 2020 - 14 May 2020, medium: artist book, at: https://www.perimeterbooks.com/collections/perimeter-editions/products/special-edition-pre-order-izabela-pluta-figures-of-slippage-and-oscillation
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2019
    Pluta I, 2019, Apparent Distance, The National 2019: New Australian Art, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 29 March 2019 - 21 July 2019, at: https://www.the-national.com.au/artists/izabela-pluta/apparent-distance/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2019
    Pluta I, 2019, Reversal, Reversal, Glasshouse Regional Gallery, 18 May 2019 - 21 July 2019, at: https://www.glasshouse.org.au/Whats-On/Izabela-Pluta-Reversal-May-2019
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2018
    Pluta I, 2018, Abstruse terms and general uncertainties, GEOGRAPHY OF SPACE, ARCHAEOLOGY OF TIME, The Australian Centre for Photography, 26 October 2018 - 01 December 2018, at: https://acp.org.au/blogs/exhibitions/tagged/izabela-pluta
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2018
    Pluta I, 2018, Figures of slippage and oscillation, Figures of slippage and oscillation, Artspace, Sydney, 29 June 2018 - 15 July 2018, at: https://www.artspace.org.au/program/ideas-platform/2018/izabela-pluta-figures-of-slippage-and-oscillation/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2018
    Pluta I, 2018, Threshold, Nostalgia it's not what is use to be!, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, 06 April 2018 - 20 May 2019, at: https://www.hawkesbury.nsw.gov.au/gallery/exhibitions/exhibitions/2018-exhibitions/nostalgia
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2017
    Pluta I, 2017, Bringing the distance near, Bringing the distance near, TAEM Gallery, The University of Wollongong, 01 September 2017 - 20 September 2017, medium: photographs, a wall shelf for works on paper, an artist book, a photomural, found objects and plywood structures for displaying photographs, at: http://www.izabelapluta.net/bringing-the-distance-near-1/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2017
    Pluta I, 2017, Paper, stone and permutations, William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize, The Monash Gallery of Art, 14 October 2017 - 11 November 2017, medium: photography, installation, at: https://www.mga.org.au/bowness-prize/gallery-2017/index/image/220
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2017
    Pluta I, 2017, Taken on the same day as the other photo, Another Art Book Fair, Artspace Sydney, 15 September 2017 - 17 September 2017, medium: artist book, at: http://vaabf.com/exhibitors/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2016
    Pluta I, 2016, Rupture, Watching the clouds pass the moon, Lake Macquarie City Art Gallery, 10 June 2016 - 31 July 2016, medium: installation comprising silver gelatin photographs; latex-based inkjet-prints, aluminium, mirror, at: https://artgallery.lakemac.com.au/exhibitions/past/watching-clouds-pass-the-moon
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2015
    Pluta I; Freeman T; Cavaniglia C, 2015, You can’t get there from here, You can’t get there from here, 55 Sydenham Rd, Marrickville NSW, 27 March 2015 - 12 April 2015, at: http://www.55sydenhamrd.com/izabela-pluta-tom-freeman
    Conference Papers | 2015
    Pluta I, 2015, 'Contemporary gleaning: shaping materiality in art', in Contempart'15, Urban Identity, Space Studies and Contemporary Arts, DAKAM Eastern Mediterranean Academic Research Centre, Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Center, Istanbul, Turkey, presented at Contempart'15, Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Center, Istanbul, Turkey, 08 June 2015 - 09 June 2015
    Conference Papers | 2015
    Pluta I, 2015, 'Nostalgia: the misalignment of place, time and experience', in Contemphoto 15' Urban Identities, DAKAM Eastern Mediterranean Academic Research Centre, Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Center, Istanbul, Turkey, presented at Contemphoto 15', Nâzım Hikmet Cultural Center, Istanbul, Turkey, 09 June 2015 - 10 June 2015
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2015
    Pluta I, 2015, Excavation, Excavation, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne, 03 February 2015 - 28 February 2015, at: http://diannetanzergallery.net.au/Izabela-Pluta/Excavation_
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2015
    Pluta I, 2015, The Voyage, Out of Quarantine, Manley Art Gallery and Museum, 04 December 2015 - 19 June 2016, medium: installation comprising vinyl wallpapers 282 x 360 cm, 282 x 232 cm; cyanotype print on plywood, 1100mm diameter
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2015
    Pluta I, 2015, Traverse, MILDURA PALIMPSEST BIENNALE #10, Mildura Biennale, The Mildura Club, Corner Deakin Avenue and 9th Street, Mildura, 02 October 2015 - 05 October 2015, medium: Photography, installation, at: http://mildurapalimpsestbiennale.com/program/curatorial-statement/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2014
    Pluta I, 2014, Agency of inanimate objects, Agency of inanimate objects, Galerie Pompom Sydney, 30 April 2014 - 25 May 2014, at: http://galeriepompom.com/galerie-pompom--exhibitions-2014--izabela-pluta.html
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2014
    Pluta I, 2014, Blue Distance, Blue Distance, UTS Gallery, Sydney, 03 June 2014 - 04 July 2014, medium: photomedia, installation, at: http://art.uts.edu.au/index.php/exhibitions/blue-distance/
    Conference Papers | 2013
    Pluta I, 2013, 'A la derive', in Duyan E; Atak Ö (ed.), DAKAM / Visualisation & Urban History In Contemporary Photography (Contemphoto '13 Contemporary Photography), DAKAM Publishing, Istanbul, Turkey, pp. 187 - 192, presented at CONTEMPHOTO '13, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul, 12 June 2013 - 14 June 2013, http://www.dakam.org/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2013
    Pluta I, 2013, Taken on the same day as the other photo, Taken on the same day as the other photo, Dianne Tanzer Gallery + Projects, Melbourne, 20 July 2013 - 24 August 2013, medium: Photomedia
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2012
    Kriesler P, 2012, Traverse, The Elgar Companion to Post Keynesian Economics, Second Edition
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2012
    Pluta I, 2012, Reservoir, Reservoir, Gippsland Art Gallery; Sale Victoria, 04 February 2012 - 25 March 2012, medium: Photomedia, installation, at: http://www.wellington.vic.gov.au/files/b6df933b-fae7-4613-b52d-a1b800ecad82/catalogue_izabela_pluta_reservoir.pdf
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2012
    Pluta I, 2012, Study for a sham ruin, Study for a sham ruin, Galerie Pompom Sydney, 11 April 2012 - 05 May 2012, medium: Photomedia, at: http://www.izabelapluta.net/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2011
    Pluta I, 2011, Displaced images of distant objects, Displaced images of distant objects, Monash Gallery of Art; 860 Ferntree Gully Road Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Australia, 21 September 2011 - 16 October 2011, at: http://www.mga.org.au/library/exhibition/1315464765_document_4_pluta_cat.pdf
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2011
    Pluta I, 2011, Gestures of the landscape, exhibition catalogue, Queensland Centre for Photography; Brisbane QLD, 27 February 2011 - 27 March 2011
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2011
    Pluta I, 2011, On things mended and broken, On things mended and broken, Dianne Tanzer Gallery and Projects; Fitzroy, Melbourne VIC, 05 March 2011 - 26 March 2011
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2010
    Pluta I, 2010, Gestures of the landscape, Gestures of the landscape, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth WA, 26 March 2010 - 01 May 2010, medium: Photomedia
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2010
    Pluta I, 2010, Macquarie, Interpreting portraits – Macquarie 1810-2010, Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Sydney, 10 December 2010 - 06 February 2011, medium: Photography, at: http://www.izabelapluta.net/
    Creative Works (non-textual) | 2010
    Pluta I, 2010, Sailing for the abyss, Sailing for the abyss, Nellie Castan Gallery; South Yarra, Melbourne, 15 April 2010 - 08 May 2010, medium: Photography, video

see www.izabelapluta.net

My Research Supervision

PhD
Felix Cehak, How can science’s methods of observing and recording rainforest environments and the natural world produce a responsive sensibility in visual art? Supervised jointly with Dr Clare Milledge.
Judith Martinez Estrada, Portraits in absentia: Reimagining Biographies Through the Archive. Secondary supervisor with Professor George Kouvaros, and Edgar Gomez Cruz.

MFA
Kristen Radge, Encountering traditional lands through touch: Working with found clay on site to reveal how materials can be embedded with coloniality. Supervised jointly with Dr Fernando do Campo.

Previous Candidates (completed)
Penny Coss, The Fabric of Time: The Turn Toward the Geologic in Contemporary Art. Supervised jointly with Dr Fernando do Campo
Nicolette Page, Exploring the aesthetic qualities of sparkle and shine in retail display toexamine late capitalism. Supervised jointly with Dr Grant Stevens.
MFA, Talia Smith, Attempts at Touching Distance: the vā, place and diasporic identity. Supervised jointly with Debra Phillips.