Colangelo’s latest rendition of “Dark Chamber” for the NotFair Art Fair 2026 also includes a limited edition of 20 + 1 A/P of hand crafted devices portable dark chambers objects designed to experience the magic, poetry and intimacy of the camera obscura in your own comfort of daily living. Hand crafted in Melbourne by the Artist himself | made from spun aluminium & powder coated | 3D printed lens mount | Ziess optical diopter | metal goose neck & stand. Please note that stand can be replace by a ceiling mount & longer gooseneck for suspended option. See Store for details.

Negative Dark Chamber 02 was produced for NotFair 2026 as part of the exhibition Lust for Life, conceived in homage to Ashley Crawford and his enduring contribution to photographic discourse. The work extends my ongoing Camera Obscura installation, in which architectural space is transformed into a functioning dark chamber.

For this iteration, I hand-painted the exhibition title Lust for Life in reverse at monumental scale and installed it directly onto the street. This intervention was captured through a large-scale negative paper exposure composed of fifty sheets of photographic paper, assembled into a single image measuring 6.2 x 2.55 metres. The exposure process required two hours of sustained labour to methodically install and secure each sheet thren a full Darkroom day to develop all the 50 sheets, embedding the duration of making into the temporal structure of the work itself.

The resulting image is characterised by soft focus and iridescent luminosity, situating it within a dreamlike visual register. Suspended between presence and absence, legibility and inversion, the work occupies a liminal space where text becomes image and public gesture becomes private reflection. The camera obscura’s translation of three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional projection destabilises conventional perception, rendering the familiar environment simultaneously recognisable and estranged.

Orientation and observation are central to the work. By collapsing distinctions between observer and participant, documentation and event, the piece foregrounds photography not as passive recording but as embodied experience. Through inversion, scale, and duration, Negative Dark Chamber 02 invites viewers to reconsider the act of seeing as a temporal and physical encounter with light, language, and space.

Negative Dark Chamber 02 selected as a Finnalist for the National Works On Paper at Mornington Peninsular Regional Gallery 2026

These tests emerge from an experimental practice developed at Nero Darkroom, where process-led investigation functions as a foundational methodology. In these camera-less iterations, Tyvek a synthetic, industrial material typically associated with durability and utility was deconstructed to its constituent fibres and printed. The b&w photo paper was pushed to the thresholds of its monochrome reproduction, permitting subtle chromatic formations to surface akin to a delicate split-toning effect. These colour shifts are contingent upon the viewer’s angle, introducing a perceptual variability to the image.

 The Tyvek abstraction and its accompanying print were developed concurrently through an intensive, materially driven process involving chemical manipulation, brushwork, and solarization.

The resulting camera-less diptychs function as both a record of experimentation and an index of material exchange, culminating into unique state prints.

Printed on Ilford Harman Direct Positive fibre-based paper.

Dark Chamber was constructed inside the Centre of Contemporary Photography Melbourne in 2023, with its dioptre facing west framing the Marquis of Lorne Pub Fitzroy.

The exposure was made with 50 sheets of Photographic Paper each measuring 61 x 50.8cm, meticulously hung in the darkness producing a paper negative image of Dark Chambers perspective.

For Renato Colangelo the Camera Obscura lives in a dream like state, a womb, gracious and poetic; harnessing the beauty of a moving image combined with the reaffirmation of memory.

‘Sunju Calabrese’ 2022 Silver Gelatin Print on Ilford Art 300 90×90 CM

‘Sunju Calabrese’ ( Sunju is Calabrian dialect for ‘I am’ )

Piero Clemente Garreffa is a painter born in Australia, His artwork strongly identifies with his Italian cultural heritage, his upbringing on a rural farm in Mildura & his sense of place within these narratives.

He is unique, flamboyant with an expressive character.

We share a unique bond with both of our fathers born in the same small town in Calabria Italy called ‘Benestare’ (‘Its good to stay’)

Walking Through the Darkness | Centre for Contemporary Photography 2023

Artist Renato Colangelo has constructed a working Camera Obscura (Latin: Camera = Chamber ; Obscura = Dark) within the CCP.

You are invited to walk-in to a darkened chamber casting an image of the outside world – reversed and upside down. The ‘Dark Chamber‘ is the very starting point of photography, the moment where darkness meets light, where the interior and exterior worlds meet and co-exist. A simple yet magical process of harnessing light, and experiencing the moment, ‘Dark Chamber‘ gives audiences the opportunity to stand ‘inside’ a camera, and watch how light and dark interact to allow us to record and observe the world. The ‘Dark Chamber‘ is womb-like and poetic, and CCP welcomes you to experience this dream-like, beautiful and moving installation.

Torn $1 note from my subterranean artifacts.

The original artwork by David Malangi – Mortuary feasts of Gurrmirringu, the great ancestral hunter 1963, was copied by the Reserve Bank in 1966 without the artists consent prompting the first Aboriginal copyright dispute.

A year later he was awarded A$1,000 dollars a medallion & a fishing kit.

Terroni is a series of images, video work & audio recordings resulting from my research into my families sentimental past identity, discovering how they continue to hold onto their cultural traditions in Australia, and how their beliefs are entrenched in the past and re-identified in present Italy.

Renato Colangelo and Darren Davison's ‘Standpoint’ (2006) is a large, walk-in camera obscura constructed on Federation Square, on the west side of ACMI, overlooking Flinders Street Station.

Colangelo’s use of photography touches on the very nature of language as something that functions on the level of idea but has a concrete and physical connection to existence.

The series ‘Confrontations’ responded to Colangelo’s interest in family portraiture. Created as an informal family album, the series captured familial moments lost love and despair.