Liss fenwick, photograph by Damien Laing

Liss Fenwick is an innovative Australian photographer and bookmaker whose first book Humpty Doom is shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards.

Book for Liss’s presentation on Friday 9 August at Te Papa.

Banner: detail of Termitaria from the series Humpty Doom, by Liss Fenwick.

Liss Fenwick

Liss is a visual artist from Larrakia country, living in Naarm/Melbourne. Their lens-based practice explores place and the transformation of problematic euro- and human-centred hierarchies in the so-called ‘Northern Territory’. Drawing on their upbringing in rural NT, Liss engages with the contested northern ‘frontier’. Their recent exhibitions include Humpty Doom (2023), BACK OUT (2022), Natural History of Destruction (2021). They were awarded the Fineman New Photography Award in 2021, and the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize in 2018, and are currently working on a PhD at RMIT University. Their debut photobook, Humpty Doom was published by Wellington’s Bad News Books in 2023 and is shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards: First Photobook Prize.

Liss will be presenting and co-leading a workshop at Photobook/NZ 2024. Follow them on Insta @liss_wick

Liss Fenwick, Brother, Mary River, from the series Humpty Doom

Liss Fenwick, Brother’s Ute, Gunn Point, from the series Humpty Doom

Liss Fenwick, Cypress Road, from the series Humpty Doom

Liss Fenwick, Larrakia land , Dundee Beach, from the series Humpty Doom

Liss Fenwick, Mum, from the series Humpty Doom

Liss Fenwick, Nuptial flight, from the series Humpty Doom

Pandanas trees, from the series Humpty Doom.

Liss Fenwick, Termitaria, from the series Humpty Doom.

LIss Fenwick, Zoe firestick, Gunn Point, from the series Humpty Doom

About Humpty Doom:

Spanning 20 years, Liss photographs the Larrakia Country on which their family lives, addressing the inevitable failures of stolen land. “I grew up in a rural district on the tropical fringe of the “northern territory”, Humpty Doo. Haunted by pictures I took as a teenager (some included in the book) I make photographs of the next generation of my family growing up in this place.”

Darkly humorous and intimate with the surrounding savannah environment, Humpty Doom engages with what it means to represent what will always be Larrakia land.

“Until I looked at these pages, I had never supposed that a book might have little need for words.” – Gerald Murnane on Humpty Doom

Liss Fenwick

Photobook / NZ