Phanta Firma

Phanta Firma is a collaborative project by Honey Long and Prue Stent that stages surreal encounters between the body and the Australian landscape. Through playful subversion of the siren archetype, the work challenges classical depictions of the female nude and its relationship to nature. 

Initiated between 2016 and 2020 on the coastal cliffs of Sydney—where both artists grew up—the series uses the horizon and ocean as backdrops to explore liminality, subconscious states, and collective mythology. As the project expanded through road trips across regional New South Wales and Victoria, it took shape in otherworldly, human-altered environments where the beautiful and unsettling converge. Degraded riverbeds blooming with blue-green algae and the vivid soils of opal mines become sites of tension and transformation. In these spaces, the artists use their own bodies as conduits—bridging inner experience with external realities and acknowledging their complicity in the extractive systems that shape both. There is also an inherent confliction in working on unceded land as settlers—where the act of connection is inseparable from the histories of displacement that precede it. 

Their shrouded, statuesque forms appear as spectral presences within the landscape: static yet emotionally charged, they lure the viewer into a disorienting, symbolic terrain. Constructed images blend with documentary fragments, collapsing the divide between interior and exterior worlds. Sensory and psychological impressions of the body resonate in the land, just as the landscape’s presence imprints upon the body. 

Within this porous, liminal space, multiple realities coexist. A swarm of ants devours a dead snake, shimmering with both life and decay. A rain puddle, shaped like a silhouette, briefly mirrors the body in the desert. A mermaid-like figure reclines in a salt pan—its surface soft and pink like flesh, yet unwelcoming. The body, no longer fixed or separate, dissolves into its surroundings—both intimate and estranged.  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS 

Honey Long and Prue Stent (both b. 1993 Sydney on Gadigal land), have worked together since 2010, developing a practice that traverses photography, moving image, performance, installation and sculpture. Working from a shared subjectivity and longstanding friendship, they have continuously explored their complex relationship to femininity and the natural world. Through their signature photographic-performative style they often depict bodies, their own and others, as abstracted uncanny forms, intrinsically linked to their surroundings. 

Long and Stent have exhibited widely within Australia and Internationally. Solo shows have taken place at PHOTO2022 International Festival of Photography Melbourne (2020), ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne (2024, 2022, 2020, 2018), PhotoEspana, Madrid (2018) and Nicola Von Senger, Zurich (2018). Other notable mentions include exhibiting at the Fotografiska Museums in New York, Stockholm, Berlin and Tallinn (2019-2024), Photofairs Shanghai, China (2024), Pingyao International Photography Festival, China (2019), Eyes on Main Street, Carolina (2019), London Photo, London (2018) and Fotofestwal Lodz, Poland (2017). In 2018 the duo were named one of Forbes Asia 30 under 30. 

Fore more information, please visit:

website: www.honeyandprue.com

instagram: @honeylong & @prue_stent

gallery: https://arcone.com.au/