Freezing to Death (Transcommunication Pack)

Vanila Netto was born in Salvador, Brazil and studied architecture before moving to Australia in 1987. In Sydney, Netto has studied at both the Australian Centre for Photography and College of Fine Arts (University of New South Wales). She is currently a PhD student in photo-media, holds an Australian Postgraduate Award and is currently at the Cite International des Arts in Paris, France after winning an Art Gallery of New South Wales studio residency.

Netto has been exhibiting her work since 1995 and has recently participated in exhibitions such as Art Gallery of New South Wales, 'Others' (2002), Imperial Slacks ('Expo 2002' and 'Patis Vasijan' 2001), Blaugrau (2001), First Draft, Sherman Artbox, and Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (all 2002). She was included in the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship exhibitions 2001 and 2002. She has worked commercially on fashion shoots, and in the film industry.

Netto uses found materials as the content basis for her photographic tableaux. For her, these discarded objects, typically plastics of predetermined colour, signal an evolutionary process; 'stuff' takes on new meaning when it is re-contextualised or transformed, creating a new designed reality. As Netto has written, she has a 'Passion for the obsolete, for the simple and basic, for investing things with unusual functionality and nobility'.

There is mischievousness in Netto's works, shown in the odd juxtapositions of people, things, chosen materials and colours that hark back to childhood memories and dreaming. In their accumulation of past with present these works gesture at a new technological future; they teem with dreams of fantasy and possibilities both real and imaginary.