about studio matarasso

Antoine Matarasso has an eclectic background with grandparents from Greece, America, France and England. He was born in 1957 in England to parents of diverse cultural backgrounds, and grew up speaking French and English. He is from a family of writers and musicians. Antoine retains fond memories that reflect his European heritage, his Jewish roots, and sharing time with family between France and Warwickshire. Antoine lived in Israel before settling in Australia.

Being different in the mono-cultural environment of an English boarding school, gave Antoine an ability to observe without involvement, and to see things from a unique perspective.

With a desire to explore, he lived and worked in Israel for several years. He continued this spiritual path in Australia, where he has brought up his family. He returns often to England and France with a camera not far from his side.

His evolution to photography was gradual - growing from empathy for the experiences he found himself part of – the every day.

When you are given a Zeiss Ikon camera as a nine year old, and the only affordable medium is black and white film, seeing in shades of grey becomes the norm.

The current exhibition is the first in his twenty seven years in Australia. His background and breeding serve him well as an artist. By not taking over any space he enters, he has been able to capture images, compositions that are unique to those moments in which they occur.

I don’t set photographs up or even go out with anything in mind, I wander and things catch my eye.

Every photograph is a snapshot of a moment in time, it's unrepeatable, and it's a context in itself. It perfectly sums up what is happening at a particular moment.
I walk a path through life and if I see something happening and I have my camera, I might be lucky enough to capture it well.

If what I see isn’t quite complete in my eye, or I anticipate that a moment may be about to happen, I wait for that something to step into place or to change - the sky - someone walking by - again, if I'm lucky I can capture it.

I don’t know why I decide to capture some moments – but I see a face, a building, a group of twigs, often out of the corner of my eye, and I reach for the camera. There seem to be stories in these pictures – these instants that I am privileged to walk into.
Although we see colour in many of his works, Antoine sees only the colour he feels through his eye and the extension of the lens. He still loves the depth and meaning in his black and white works.

Antoine’s images highlight the many basic elements of our every day, the happenings we each pass by a hundred times without thought. In that second taken to notice them, Antoine sees the composition, an image he captures at the moment it is happening. There is a dignity in each of the images, a respect for the composition of each vignette.

Antoine Matarasso sells privately to collectors and lovers of modern and decorative art - this current exhibition spans three years of work, pieced together to evoke a sense of longing.

He and his wife Beth live and work in inner city Brisbane.