Keith Giles

Artist Statement // The immortelle that covers my face is a funerary adornment, but this does not represent a death, it signifies courage, renewal and resilience. In my early life, the mask represented a beginning of repression and methods to disguise it, of bullying and abuse and the erasure of identity. There is a narrative here of self-censorship and childhood trauma and the effects that can resonate for many years. 

Keith Giles is a curator and photographer whose research examines childhood trauma, bullying and its lasting effects.  His work investigates those wounded, often hidden, silent places in the self. About Giles’s photographs in the Bethink exhibition, Christine Nicholls writes: “This powerful group of photographs represents a convincing visual narrative of a child largely robbed of his childhood and selfhood. At the same time, taken as a whole, these works comprise a meditation on the nature of childhood trauma and its lasting effects, and the courage that it takes to come to terms with such a past.” From 2007 – 2017 he was the Curatorial Manager of the SASA Gallery, UniSA and was undertaking a PhD (Visual Arts) researching issues around censorship and self-censorship in relation to contemporary photographic practice. Keith’s artwork has been collected and published nationally and internationally. Recent curatorial projects and exhibitions includeTransmitting Cultural Memory, Newmarch Gallery and Twist, Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery.

Quentin Brown writes about Keith Giles in Neoterica 2024.

Keith Giles, Immortelle, 1967-2024, triptych Giclee print on German etchingpaper, chromogenic inks, 71 x 100 cm each, image: courtesy of the artist.