Australian artist, writer and educator
Anthony Luvera (born 1974) is an Australian artist, writer and educator, living in London. He is a socially engaged artist who works with photography on collaborative projects, which have included working with those who have experienced homelessness and LGBT+ people. Luvera is an Associate Professor of Photography at Coventry University.
"Stories from Gilded Pavements" was shown in 12 central London Underground stations and is held in the collection of London Transport Museum. "Frequently Asked Questions" (with Gerald Mclaverty) was shown at Tate Liverpool. "Agency", a collaborative project with people experiencing homelessness, was part of Coventry UK City of Culture 2021.
Career.
Luvera is an Associate Professor of Photography in the Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities, at Coventry University. He is also Chair of the Education Committee at the Royal Photographic Society.
He edits "Photography for Whom?", a journal about socially engaged photography, which he set up in 2019.
Luvera has worked extensively with people who have experienced homelessness. Many of these projects use his "assisted self-portrait" methodology, where the subject of the photograph, assisted by Luvera, makes and selects the pictures. One project, "Stories from Gilded Pavements", was displayed in 12 central London Underground stations in 2005, part of Art on the Underground. In another, "Agency", a commission for Coventry UK City of Culture 2021, participants documented their experiences and places in the city of significance to them, and created assisted self-portraits. The photographs were shown along Warwick Row in Coventry and in a free newspaper distributed across the city. In a project called "Construct", Luvera worked in the kitchens for a year at a Birmingham homelessness charity, through which he met people that made assisted self-portraits.
In another ongoing project on homelessness, Luvera and Gerald Mclaverty have conducted iterations of their "Frequently Asked Questions". This project involves sending basic questions to councils across the UK, asking how to access systems of care for people experiencing homelessness. Many councils fail to respond, treat the questions as freedom of information requests, or reply with automated lists of links. The resulting exhibitions collate information about the range of responses from councils.
in 2013/14, with "Not Going Shopping", Luvera made collaborative self-portraits with LGBT+ people in Brighton and Hove. The portraits were exhibited as large-format posters in outdoor public spaces across the city and copies of a newspaper were distributed for free. In 2017 in Northern Ireland, for 'LGBTQ Visions of Peace in a Society Emerging from Conflict', Luvera conducted a similar project with 7 participants: "Let Us Eat Cake". This project was published as a book and exhibited in galleries.
References.
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