Working independently, two artists present a single body of work inviting a rethink 
on how our identities are formed and how we form our identities. 

One artist reframes and recreates the childhood portrait with the grown adult 
present; juxtaposing two moments separated by three decades of experience. 

The second seeks to locate the private in the public and the real in the ideal. 
Reframing advertising imagery and removing commercial signifiers, appropriated 
portraits are repositioned as moments of intimacy and the personal. 

Presented together these photographs confuse and question our definitions of 
private and public, memory and fabrication, self and other. 



Vivian Cooper Smith is New Zealand born, and spent his childhood in Bangladesh, 
India and Perth. His is now a Melbourne based photographer and graphic designer. 



David Van Royen is a Dutch born, Perth raised photographer who has for the last 
five years been exhibiting widely both nationally and internationally. He is based in 
Melbourne.