Ali McCann’s highly staged photographic compositions explore the illusionary and nostalgic tendencies of the photographic image. Her work also examines the extended life of objects - pedagogical, decorative and sentimental - when displaced in alternate temporal, spatial and psychological realms. Much of her work is informed by outmoded photography guides, amateur artworks, and the decor of educational and domestic spaces of her childhood and adolescence.
Ali McCann lives and works in Naarm / Melbourne. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including, most recently: Slippery Images, NGV National Gallery of Victoria (2023), Frozen Blood, Neon Parc (2023), States of Disruption, Centre For Contemporary Photography (2022), Tree Log Paper Book, Bus Projects (2022), SOCIAL, correspondences (2022), Not for the Sake of Something More, Sarah Scout Presents (2021), Οι νέοι, Gertrude Contemporary (2019), Still Life Pt III, Lon Gallery (2019), Masks for Magicians, Caves (2018), Polytechnic, Tristian Koenig (2018), An Introduction to Liminal Aesthetics, c3 Contemporary Art Space (2017) and Throwing off the Hump, Kings Artist Run (2017). In 2024 and 2020 she was a finalist in the National Photography Prize 2020 at MAMA Murray Art Museum, Albury, NSW and the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award 2022 at HOTA, Surfers Paradise, QLD. Her work is held in public and private collections across Australia and abroad.
She completed a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, in 2017. She also holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and a Graduate Diploma of Education, University of Melbourne.