Konjac is a pseudonym. The name came from someone noticing the phonetic similarity between konjac noodles and my surname. The work draws on the New Topographics and Japanese aesthetics of impermanence. Form and texture accumulate through repetition and proximity rather than composition. Patterns reveal themselves over time.
2026 Exhibition Series | Grid Can of Sardines
The city was broken into blocks. What people leave behind became the subject rather than the people themselves. Graffiti, posters, worn walls, and temporary markings accumulate across Melbourne's Hoddle Grid, turning it into a cramped archive of human presence.
Grid Can of Sardines is a photographic census of trace. The Hoddle Grid defines Melbourne's CBD as an eight-by-eight block layout, and the project follows it literally: every block walked, every block photographed, over eight months and 2,500 kilometres. The total number of images was fixed before shooting began, derived from the postcode 3000 divided across 64 blocks, resulting in 47 images per block. The number is bureaucratic, arbitrary, and absolute.
The entire series was shot on a single camera and lens, at 100,000 ISO and f/16, using only natural light. The high ISO produces digital grain; the narrow aperture keeps everything in focus. Nothing recedes. The approach draws on the neutral, descriptive tradition of the New Topographics, applied not to suburban sprawl or monumental landscape but to the residue accumulating in an urban core subject to surveillance and regulation.
2023 Exhibition Series | Concrete Monstrosity
Gascoine & Konjac presented Concrete Monstrosity, a photographic exhibition exploring the misunderstood beauty of brutalist architecture. For a few short decades, concrete combined with the post-war artistic boom ushered in a new era of architecture. The limitations of form and finish were undefined. Over time, public sentiment shifted. Politicians and developers labeled these imaginative creations as 'Concrete Monstrosities'. Rather than fight it, the exhibition embraced the monstrous label. It offered viewers a clean slate to look at and appreciate these beautiful monsters with fresh eyes.
Concrete Monstrosity presented a series of black and white medium format film photographs made, developed, and printed by Gascoine & Konjac in Sydney and Melbourne. It was accompanied by Concrete Mistress, an evocative film shot on 16mm cinefilm.