Celeste de Clario Davis
Celeste is a photographer and filmmaker based in Naarm (Melbourne). Her practice explores documentary, photographic archives and the complexities of lens-based documentation. Celeste has lived experience in public housing and is passionate about community filmmaking. Much of Celeste’s photography background has informed her video work: in 2017 Celeste had her second solo exhibition ‘HOMES’, a visual ode to public housing (supported by Yarra Council), — and has just completed working as the cinematographer and producer on feature-length documentary, Things Will Be Different, in collaboration with RMIT’s Centre for Global and Urban Studies, about displacement and Victoria’s Public Housing Renewal Program. Celeste co-founded APAX Creative Studios in 2021, a photography studio and multidisciplinary creative space in Preston where she currently practices photography. For decades this life-size wooden horse has been more garaged than stabled: packed tight with other relics, appearing and disappearing as the mass shifts. Before, it was a classified ad “for collection” in a local newspaper. Its life previous is as unknown as its future. By chronicling this sculpture, I preserve some part of it. A proxy, perhaps, but also proof that it was and is. Objects have two destinies: a museum (and then a most-times a dark warehouse), or the tip. Either way, the horse has been archived. In light.