The seemingly disparate images throughout Chris Gergley’s body of work, from the slick and formalist through the bleak, desolate and occasionally off-beat and beautiful are linked together through a vague feeling of utopian failure.

Gergley demonstrates that our way of deriving meaning from things based on visual representation can be, and often is misconstrued. In one series of 48 images, all identically composed, the language of typological photography (as practiced by German artists Bernd and Hilla Becher) is used to reveal contemporary attitudes toward once hopeful Modernist apartment buildings, whose gold lettered names and vibrant colours have faded over time.

Often but not necessarily working in series, Gergley observes his surroundings, pulling stories from various sources while simultaneously reinterpreting and deconstructing them through his camera. The strength of the work lies in the story behind the photograph, whether the work is conceived as a group or as individual pieces.

The title of his series ‘Queen City’ refers to our colonial history and to the high hopes intended for Regina, the artist’s hometown. The radically antithetical reality of the city today is captured in bleak desolation by Gergley’s camera. Throughout his practice he uses a range of photographic methods and devices, choosing from documentary, illustrative and scientific genres depending on his requirements.