Vee Speers & Ruud Van Empel: Phoenix | Inventing Van Gogh & Landscapes

​Vee Speers, a Paris-based Australian artist, fell in love with photography in the 70's, assisting her father in his converted caravan dark-room, mesmerised by seeing his portraits appear like magic.  Following art school in Brisbane in the 80’s, Speers worked as a Stills Photographer at the ABC Television in Sydney. In 1990, a short stay in France became a permanent move to Paris, which according to her is a place with ‘unlimited potential and endless creative inspiration’. By the end of the 90’s, Speers’ path was being forged as a photo artist, and since then she has been engaging viewers around the world with the dramatic tension of  her story-telling through portraiture. 

Her work has been exhibited in museums, galleries, art fairs and festivals around the world, and been published in features and on covers of more than 60 international magazines, with 3 sold-out monographs of her work. Her photographs have been acquired by Sir Elton John Collection, Michael Wilson Collection, Hoffman Collection U.S. , Carter Potash Collection, Morten Viskum Collection, Alan Siegel, Lawrence Schiller, DZ Bank, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Museum 21C, Kentucky, George Eastman House, Beth Rudin Dewoody,  Hudson Bay Company Art Fund, CB Collection, Tokyo.

Ruud van Empel has reinvented Van Gogh’s portrait. Nobody knows exactly what Van Gogh really looked like as an adult as there are no portrait photos of him after his 19th birthday. We base our idea of his appearance mainly on his painted self-portraits, which differ greatly from one another. Van Empel has attempted to reconstruct Van Gogh’s portrait based on photographs of various look-a-likes. He used the nose and ears of one, the eyes and hair of another. He has placed the parts on well-known self-portraits by Van Gogh. He uses no paint, but only digital photos which he combines to create a fully formed vision. For those who don’t know any better, you might think that unknown photos of Van Gogh have resurfaced. He has situated the new Vincents in scenes that recall places in his life, such as the Borinage, Provènce and his studio. Van Empel also produced a series of photographic works based on landscapes and floral still lifes by Van Gogh. They remind us of the region of Brabant where both Van Gogh and Van Empel grew up and demonstrate the photographer’s strong affinity with Van Gogh. Also on view are selections from the artist’s additional landscape series, demonstrating his prowess in digitally combining found natural elements into fantastical surreal scenes, transporting us to a new land.