Review: ‘Scott’s Last Expedition’ at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 17th June – 16th October, 2011

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935) 'The former whaling ship, the 'Terra Nova'' 1911 from the exhibition 'Scott's Last Expedition' at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, June - October, 2011

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
The former whaling ship, the ‘Terra Nova’
1911
Gelatin silver print
Canterbury Museum NZ

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

John 15:13

It is difficult to describe how heroic a figure Robert Scott, ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ was to a child of the Empire growing up in the 1960s. He and his doomed party were, and still are, the quintessential heroes of my youth. Despite what we now know of Scott’s failures in leadership and organisation, he and his comrades remain embedded in English consciousness as all that is noble about the explorers of the time. They may have failed to become the first to reach the South Pole and died on the return journey but what a magnificent effort it was, what camaraderie and fortitude they showed in the face of adversity.

At the centre of the exhibition at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney is a representation of Scott’s base camp at Cape Evans. Visitors can walk inside the life-size hut and get a sense of the everyday realities for the 25 expedition members, from the cramped conditions and homeliness of the hut, to the wealth of specimens collected and experiments conducted. The exhibition also reunites the artefacts used by Scott and his team together with scientific specimens collected during the 1910-1913 expedition for the first time since their use in Antarctica. The exhibition uses life-size reproductions of the photographs of Herbert Ponting. At this scale it enables the viewer to inspect in intimate detail the habitus of their lives.

What a master of photography Ponting was. His photographs are classically framed and formally restrained; his use of light is magical. The camera always seems to be in the perfect position to capture the subject, neither too high or low but beautifully balanced so that the eye is led into the photograph, to investigate those wonderful nooks and crannies of the image plane. Because of the excellent quality press images I have been able to close in on details of the photographs (a la Ken Burns). The receding row of male faces to the left of Scott’s birthday dinner, June 1911 (below) that lead to Scott as the focal point at the head of the table, flags of St. George flying above, the two standing men acting as vertical counterpoints to the equipoise of the horizontal perspectival point – and then we glimpse the punctum of the piece of bread held between darkened fingers and thumb of the man caught in mid-conversation with his neighbour. Also note the framed images on the wall behind at top left, bearing witness to the fact that living is more civilised in such a desolate place if you are surrounded by images of culture and home.

This remembrance becomes poignant in the photograph Scott writing in his area of the expedition hut, Scott’s cubicle (below). In the detail of the image we observe candid photographs of what are presumably Scott’s wife in two photographs that are slightly different from each other, his wife and child, his father and small photographs of his children pinned to the hut’s wall. Memories of home and family that become multiple momenti mori – the death of the people in the images pinned to the wall, the death present in Pontings’ photograph (the little death at the point in time that the photograph was taken) and the death of Scott himself. The pocket watch hung from a wooden post only adds to this sense of refractive timelessness.

The sense of these men living in close quarters in this community is beautifully captured in Ponting’s photograph The Tenements, 9 October 1911 (below). Three vertical lozenges project into the space from the bottom of the image, each containing its own theatrical diorama. The balance and space between the men looking across, down, up and out of the image is outstanding. The distance between Oates in the top centre and the man on the right seems somehow infinite in the photograph, like the distance in Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest where Cary Grant is waiting for the bus in the middle of nowhere and on the other side of the road is another man, also waiting. The spatial tension between the two men in the photograph is palpable, emphasised by the stacked horizontal shelf behind them. The gaze of the man at bottom left allows the viewer some room for escape from the confines of the tenements and the confines of the image plane, for without that gaze the viewer would be caught with no way out. In the detail of this man we can, as before, note the importance of personal remembrances of home with a picture pinned on the wall behind his bunk and a Fry’s Cocoa box stored underneath.

And so to the final few photographs in the posting: the famous photograph of Scott and the Polar Party at the South Pole (below) taken by Henry Bowers. Taken the day after the party had arrived at the South Pole, only to discover that Roald Amundsen had beaten them to their goal by five weeks, Bowers (seated at bottom left) used a string to release the shutter of the camera that can just be seen in his right hand in the photograph – a photograph that was then printed by Herbert Ponting from the recovered glass plate negative. In the detail of Scott and Oates in this photograph you can see the weariness, anguish and defeat in faces that are sun and wind damaged, knowing that they had to trek all the way back from this awful place (as Scott himself said, “Great God! This is an awful place”).

I have put a photograph by Herbert Ponting, Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913, below the detail of him at the South Pole. The face is almost unrecognisable from the strong, handsome face in Ponting’s picture, the prominent nose now blackened and dark being the only thing that make it recognisably the same person.

In the detail of Ponting’s photograph, if you enlarge it, you can see two small points of light in his eyes, probably the light of the polar sun when Ponting took the photograph. For me these two spots of light become portents of what was to come as Oates walked out into a blizzard saying those immortal words, “I am just going outside and may be some time”. To me these points of light seared into his retina are like the driving snow that he walked out into in such a selfless act. It is very emotional for me as an Englishman and as a human being to look into the face of this man knowing what he was eventually to go through.

Though they failed in their quest to become the first to the South Pole, though Scott had his faults, for this child, for this man they will forever remain my heroes.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Australian National Maritime Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Anonymous photographer. 'Captain Robert Falcon Scott' Nd from the exhibition 'Scott's Last Expedition' at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, June - October, 2011

Anonymous photographer
Captain Robert Falcon Scott
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Licensed with permission of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Members of the ‘Terra Nova’ expedition with Scott in the centre
1911
Gelatin silver print
Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Scott’s birthday dinner, June 1911
1911
Gelatin silver print
Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935) 'Scott’s birthday dinner, June 1911' 1911 (detail)

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Scott’s birthday dinner, June 1911 (detail)
1911
Gelatin silver print
Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Scott writing in his area of the expedition hut, Scott’s cubicle
1911
Gelatin silver print
Pennell Collection, Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935) 'Scott writing in his area of the expedition hut, Scott's cubicle' 1911 (detail)

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Scott writing in his area of the expedition hut, Scott’s cubicle (detail)
1911
Gelatin silver print
Pennell Collection, Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
The Tenements, 9 October 1911
1911
Gelatin silver print
Pennell Collection, Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935) 'The Tenements, 9 October 1911' 1911 (detail)

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
The Tenements, 9 October 1911 (detail)
1911
Gelatin silver print
Pennell Collection, Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Edward Atkinson in the laboratory
1911
Silver gelatin print
Canterbury Museum NZ

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935) 'Edward Atkinson in the laboratory' 1911 (detail)

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Edward Atkinson in the laboratory (detail)
1911
Silver gelatin print
Canterbury Museum NZ

One hundred years after its tragic end, the definitive story of British explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica is being told in a major international exhibition coming to the Australian National Maritime Museum this June.

Scott’s Last Expedition will reunite real artefacts used by Scott and his team together with rare scientific specimens collected during the 1910-1913 expedition for the first time since their use in Antarctica.

When Scott set off on what was his second journey to explore the Antarctic on board the former whaling ship Terra Nova, he could not have predicted it would be his last. Tragically he and four of his colleagues died on the return trek to the South Pole two years later, having lost the race to be first. The exhibition however will go beyond the familiar tales of the journey to the Pole and the death of the Polar party to explore the Terra Nova expedition from every angle.

“Over the years public perceptions of Scott have varied greatly, from hero to flawed leader, and discussions of what really happened still captivate people,” said museum director Mary-Louise Williams today. “This exhibition will give visitors a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in this epic journey and the remarkable landscape of Antarctica,” she said.

Visitors will uncover Scott the man, learn more about the people who made up the expedition and explore every fascinating detail of this historic journey. At the centre of the exhibition will be a life-size representation of Scott’s Cape Evans’ base camp. Visitors can walk inside and get a sense of the everyday realities for the expedition’s members… from the cramped conditions and homeliness of the hut to the wealth of specimens collected and scientific investigations conducted.

Original artefacts, equipment, clothes, and personal effects will be displayed for the first time in Australia and show the group’s attempts to make life in one of the most hostile environments on Earth as bearable as possible. Food tins including Fry’s Cocoa, Trufood Trumilk, and Symington’s Pea Flour recovered from the hut will be on display together with instruments, a microscope, and even Scott’s gramophone.

Photographs of the environment and life in camp taken by expedition photographer Herbert Ponting and poignant letters and diaries by various expedition members create a vivid picture of what life was like… working in hostile conditions, the struggles for survival and the strength of human endurance and courage.

Scott’s Terra Nova expedition made a significant contribution to Antarctic science. The expedition included a full scientific program with a large team of scientists making new discoveries which directly led to a greater understanding of Antarctica. The scientists had to endure harsh Antarctic conditions to carry out their work. It was cold, windy and completely dark in winter and, if not careful, the scientists could easily get frostbitten. And yet despite the conditions, the expedition left a rich legacy that continues to inspire and inform today.

Natural History Museum, London, the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand and the Antarctic Heritage Trust, New Zealand, have collaborated to create this exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the expedition and celebrate its achievements.

Press release from the Australian National Maritime Museum

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
A member of the team tucks into a tin of Heinz baked beans in the Ross Dependency, during Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition to the Antarctic, January 1912
1912
Silver gelatin print
Canterbury Museum NZ

Neerav Bhatt (photographer) Installation view of the exhibition 'Scott's Last Expedition' at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, June - October 2011

Neerav Bhatt (photographer)
Installation view of the exhibition Scott’s Last Expedition at the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney, June – October 2011
CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Scott and the Polar Party at the South Pole 1912

Scott and the Polar Party at the South Pole
Left to right: Captain Lawrence Oates, Lieutenant Henry Bowers (seated), Captain Robert Falcon Scott, Dr Edward Wilson (Seated), Petty Officer Edgar Evans
1912
Licensed with permission of the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

Notice the camera release cord in the right hand of Lieutenant Henry Bowers.

The fatal journey

Scott’s 1,450 km journey to the geographic South Pole began on 1 November 1911, two weeks after the Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen left his base camp at the Bay of Whales. Amundsen reached the pole first – on 14 December 1911 – and then raced back to tell the world their news. Scott and his team reached the Pole a month later on 17 January 1912 having been beset by fierce weather conditions. The disappointment was immense. The return journey was undertaken in horrid weather with harsh, intense cold and violent blizzards that, in the end, defeated them. Evans failed first, suffering concussion from a fall; Oates suffered dramatic frostbite to his feet – gangrene had set in – and he crawled out of the tent saying the now famous words, “I am just going outside and may be some time”. The remaining men – Scott, Wilson and Bowers – were weak with malnutrition, starvation and exhaustion and perished on or around 29/30 March 1912 – some three weeks after the world learned that Amundsen had reached the Pole first.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott at the South Pole (detail)

Captain Lawrence Oates at the South Pole (detail)

Herbert Ponting. 'Lawrence Oates' c. 1911

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913
c. 1911
Silver gelatin print
Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

Herbert Ponting. 'Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913' c. 1911 (detail)

Herbert Ponting (British, 1870-1935)
Captain Lawrence Edward Grace Oates during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913 (detail)
c. 1911
Silver gelatin print
Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

Anonymous photographer. 'The snow cairn raised over Scott, Bowers and Wilson by the search party, their final resting ground' 1912 (detail)

Anonymous photographer
The snow cairn raised over Scott, Bowers and Wilson by the search party, their final resting ground (detail)
1912
Silver gelatine print
Canterbury Museum NZ

Australian National Maritime Museum
2 Murray Street
Darling Harbour
Sydney NSW 2000
Australia

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Exhibition: ‘Boris Mikhailov: Case History’ at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

Exhibition dates: 26th May – 5th September, 2011

Many thankx to The Museum of Modern Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, b. 1938)  'Untitled', from the series 'Case History'  1997-1998 from the exhibition 'Boris Mikhailov: Case History' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, May - September, 2011

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, b. 1938)
Untitled
1997-1998
From the series Case History
Chromogenic colour print
93″ x 49 15/16″ (236.2 x 126.8cm)
Courtesy the artist, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
© 2011 Boris Mikhailov

The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 spelled disaster for many citizens of Mikhailov’s native Kharkov, in Ukraine. As the state apparatus collapsed, bleak predictability rapidly gave way to chaos and want. The photographer, whose earlier work includes sympathetic records of communal pastimes, responded with a bitter series that starkly evokes the squalor of desperation, drink, and despair. In the same years, but in another photographic mode altogether, he experimented with flagrantly staged political and sexual satires.

A decade later, as a few made millions, the least fortunate Ukrainians were more desperate still. This untitled work (above) belongs to Mikhailov’s bold and risky series Case History, for which he paid Kharkov’s outcasts to pose and perform. The best of his new photographs improbably blend the opposing poles of his art. No-nonsense realism and impromptu playacting seamlessly conspire in a persuasive theater of wrenching misery.

Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999, p. 357.

With Case History, Boris Mikhailov confronts viewers with the effects of the Soviet Union’s collapse on the homeless and marginalised people of Ukraine. To create these raw, colour-saturated, large-scale photographs, Mikhailov paid his subjects and worked with them to stage poses inspired by religious and historical paintings. “This is the first time I paid my models,” he explains. “I don’t think this is an issue. If models get paid to appear in an advertisement, nobody cares. Why can’t I? This gave me the possibility to photograph them, and gave them the possibility to live.”

Additional text from Seeing Through Photographs online course, Coursera, 2016

Mikhailov’s Case History series examines the social oppression and devastating poverty of a disenfranchised community in Kharkiv, Ukraine: those who had been left homeless by the rise of the capitalist oligarchy following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The rich and the homeless – the new classes of a new society – this was, as we had been taught, one of the features of capitalism,” Mikhailov observed. A haunting document of post-Soviet urban conditions, the series captures the failed promise of capitalism with poetry and grit.

Gallery label from 2020

Case History / Boris Mikhailov

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, born 1938)  'Untitled', from the series 'Case History'  1997-1998 from the exhibition 'Boris Mikhailov: Case History' at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, May - September, 2011

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, born 1938)  'Untitled', from the series 'Case History'  1997-1998

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, b. 1938) ' Untitled', from the series 'Case History'  1997-1998

The Museum of Modern Art presents Boris Mikhailov: Case History, the first presentation dedicated entirely to the artist’s seminal series Case History (1997-98) in an American museum, from May 26 to September 5, 2011. Ukrainian-born Mikhailov (b. 1938) is one of the leading photographers from the former Soviet Union. For over 40 years, Mikhailov has explored the position of the individual within the mechanisms of public ideology, touching on such subjects as Ukraine under Soviet rule, the living conditions in post-communist Eastern Europe, and the fallen ideals of the Soviet Union. Although deeply rooted in a historical context, his work incorporates profoundly engaging and personal narratives of humour, lust, vulnerability, ageing, and death. The exhibition is organised by Eva Respini, Associate Curator of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.

This exhibition, which features some 20 works, is selected from the larger body of work of Case History, which comprises 400 photographs and was published as a book in 1999. Arguably his most challenging body of work, it explores the deeply troubling circumstances of bomzhes – the homeless – a new class that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1996, after spending time abroad, he returned to Kharkov, which seemed like a changed city, with foreign ads and the glitz of a new western capitalist façade. Whereas most mainstream media focused on the new capitalists and rising oligarchs of the former Soviet republics, Mikhailov’s pictures describe the circumstances of a largely invisible underclass. Set against the bleak backdrop of the industrial city of Kharkov, his life-size colour photographs chronicle the oppression, devastating poverty, and everyday reality of a disenfranchised community living on the margins of the Ukraine’s new economic regime. Many of his subjects display their wounds, rashes, tattoos, and growths.

For Mikhailov the act of photographing was partly born out of a sense of responsibility: Case History records post-Soviet realities, in stark contrast to the previous histories of the Ukraine (1930s famine, war, Soviet losses in World War II) that went undocumented. One of the most haunting documents of post-Soviet urban conditions, these unforgettable pictures capture this new reality with poetry, clarity, and grit. The large size of Mikhailov’s pictures is in keeping with the scale of contemporary photography, creating a visceral and immersive viewing experience. Ms. Respini states, “Mikhailov inhabits the worlds of social documentarian and contemporary artist. It is partly the tension between these two roles that makes the work so complex and powerful.”

Case History also explores the complicated relationship between photographer and subject. The photographs are collaborations, sometimes the result of a spontaneous moment, other times directed by the artist. Central to the exhibition is the seven-part work the artist calls “requiem.” The mannered posing of the people in his pictures exposes the constructed nature of the photographs, challenging the idea of objective truth and authenticity implied by documentary photography. For Mikhailov, photographic seeing is an accountable act, and viewers participate in this act. With these pictures, Mikhailov implicates himself – and the viewers – in the act of looking.

Press release from The Museum of Modern Art website

Installation view of the exhibition Boris Mikhailov: Case History at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York

Boris Mikhailov (Ukrainian, b. 1938) 'Untitled' 1997-1998

What does it mean to present images like these as art in a museum? In one respect, they carry on a tradition of picturing the downtrodden exemplified in photographs by countless artists from Walker Evans to Andres Serrano, who has made studio images of homeless people resembling the heroic portraits of American Indians by the 19th century photographer Edward S. Curtis. Works like those tell us that, whatever their outward appearances and circumstances, the poor have souls that are worthy of respect.

Mr. Mikhailov’s photographs are not so ennobling. They render their subjects as exotic and even demonic. Specimens in a Boschian freak show, they elicit sympathy, revulsion or amazement but not admiration or empathy. Because there are no titles or captions, you don’t know who the people are or anything about their lives. Maybe some were research scientists or university professors fired for not toeing party lines or for crossing paths with a ruthless plutocrat at the wrong place and time; maybe they were all rounded up from an insane asylum or an alcoholic detox center. …

All seem to belong to a tribe or extended family of outcasts. But “the homeless,” you might want to object, is not a homogeneous population. It includes alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, prostitutes, con artists, people with mental illnesses and hard-working citizens going through rough patches. Mr. Mikhailov is not concerned with personal particulars. Under his direction the subjects are, above all, actors who function mainly as allegorical symbols. They are metonyms for the underbelly of society, and their challenging revelations of their own usually hidden body parts is a metaphor for the whole project of exposing what polite society would prefer to keep under wraps. To the extent that they appear everywhere around the world, including in New York City, they are universal signs of capitalism’s failure to care for the less fortunate.

Ken Johnson. “Behold the Anonymous Downtrodden,” on The New York Times website June 2, 2011 [oNline] Cited 08/01/2025. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

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Exhibition: ‘The Lives of Great Photographers’ at The National Media Museum, Bradford

Exhibition dates: 15th April – 4th September, 2011

Curator: Brian Liddy

Many thankx to The National Media Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Lady Clementina Hawarden (British, 1822-1865) 'Self Portrait' c. 1864 from the exhibition 'The Lives of Great Photographers' at The National Media Museum, Bradford, April - September, 2011

Lady Clementina Hawarden (British, 1822-1865)
Self Portrait
c. 1864
Albumen print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Clementina, Lady Hawarden, is a poetic, if elusive, presence among nineteenth-century photographers. As a devoted mother, her life revolved around her eight children. She took up photography in 1857; using her daughters as models, she created a body of work remarkable for its technical brilliance and its original depiction of nascent womanhood.
Lady Hawarden showed her work in the 1863 and 1864 exhibitions of the Photographic Society. With the exception of a few rare examples, her photographs remained in the possession of her family until 1939, when the more than eight hundred images were donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Only recently have they been the objects of research, publication, and exhibition.

Text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

John Moffat (Scottish, 1819-1894)
William Henry Fox Talbot with camera and lens
1864

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Carlyle like a rough block of Michael Angelo’s sculpture
1867
Albumen print
Courtesy The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum/SSPL

Henry Herschel Hay Cameron (British born India, 1852-1911)
Mrs Julia Margaret Cameron
1870
Albument print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
So Like a Shatter’d Column Lay the King
1875
Albumen print
Courtesy of The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum

Photographers have created some of the most famous and memorable images ever produced, combining science and art since 1839. The Lives of Great Photographers, a free to enter exhibition at the National Media Museum in Bradford, draws on the Museum’s renowned collection to focus on the pioneers behind the camera, exploring the extraordinary stories surrounding some of photography’s most important innovators and artists.

Featuring Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia Margaret Cameron, Robert Capa, William Henry Fox Talbot, Weegee, Tony Ray-Jones, Fay Godwin and Eadweard Muybridge, the exhibition will display iconic images and artefacts from these and other great names, selected exclusively from the National Collection of Photography.

Exhibition curator Brian Liddy said: “Photography has been with us for more than 170 years, and in that time countless famous photographs have been taken by many famous photographers. Often we may think we know these men and women because we know their work so well, but over time so many photographers’ personal stories have become overshadowed by their most famous pictures. This major exhibition aims to redress the balance.”

The show begins with an investigation into the rivalry between two of the medium’s earliest pioneers. Without Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, photography as it known today would not exist. Daguerre, a former theatrical designer, presented the photographic process to France and the world in 1839. Working in parallel and in competition, Talbot, who became an MP for Chippenham, went on to create the first negative from which multiple copy photographs could be produced.

As technology evolved, the breadth and range of photography increased, and the methods by which it could provide a source of income, or artistic expression, became more diverse. Julia Margaret Cameron, although primarily considered an artist, copyrighted her work and attempted to make a living by selling copies. Her personal connections gave her the opportunity to produce some of the first celebrity photographs in existence. Olive Edis employed photography as a serving war artist during the First World War and Edward Steichen’s career was remarkable for its variety as he moved effortlessly from art, to fashion, to advertising.

Photography also proved an ideal medium when it came to documenting world events. Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange were both driven by their social consciences to record the Great Depression in America. Photojournalism, the cousin of documentary photography, is represented in the exhibition by names such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, founding members of the world’s first photographic agency, Magnum. Both served in the Second World War and produced images that helped define an era.

One of the most notorious life stories is that of the English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. His pioneering work in chronophotography, whereby movement is captured by a sequence of photographic exposures, famously demonstrated that all four legs of a horse left the ground as it galloped. Until then the motion of a horse’s hooves were too quick for the human eye to determine. Perhaps less well known is the fact that Muybridge murdered his wife’s lover in cold blood but was later acquitted with a verdict of ‘justifiable homicide’.

The exhibition also includes Roger Fenton, Lady Clementina Hawarden, Alfred Stieglitz, André Kertész, and Larry Burrows. Each photographer is represented by their photographic portrait and a selection of their images. None is living, as only those whose lives and work can be evaluated in their entirety have been selected.

Brian Liddy added: “This exhibition shows just how rich the museum’s collections are. The work of some of the best-known photographers in history will be shown alongside the kinds of cameras they would have had to carry and use in the course of their work. We’ve also taken the opportunity to show rarely seen material, such as pages from the notebooks of Tony Ray-Jones detailing what was going through his mind when he was thinking about how to get the pictures he wanted.”

“By recounting the lives of these great photographers, we hope to provide an insight into what led them to produce some of the greatest photographs ever taken.”

Press release from The National Media Museum

Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877)
The Ladder
1844
Salted paper print from paper negative
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Princesses Helena and Louise
1856
Albumen print
Courtesy of The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum

Photograph of Princess Helena and Princess Louise, seated outside together wearing identical outfits, including hats. Both look to front. Upturned stool in foreground.

The two princesses look straight at the camera in what is an unusually direct pose. Princess Helena (1846-1923) and Princess Louise (1848-1939) were the fifth and six children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Princess Helena was herself a keen collector of photographs and compiled a number of albums commemorating her many visits to Balmoral

Text adapted from Roger Fenton – Julia Margaret Cameron: Early British photographs from the Royal Collection, London, 2010 on the Royal Collection Trust website

Eadweard Muybridge (English, 1830-1904)
Man (Muybridge) throwing discus walking up steps walking
Plate 519 Animal Locomotion
1887
Collotype
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Unknown photographer
Eadweard Muybridge
Date unknown
Courtesy of The Royal Photographic Society Collection at the National Media Museum

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
Alfred Stieglitz
1905
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Albanian woman Ellis Island
1905
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

At the Ethical Culture School in New York Lewis Hine taught photography to teenagers, encouraging them to observe others. He took his classes to Ellis Island to see arriving immigrants. “At times it looked like a costume ball,” he wrote, “with the multicoloured, many-styled national costumes,” This is one of over 200 photographs that Hine made himself at Ellis Island, representing an Albanian immigrant, wearing her best clothes, cleaned and immaculately pressed. Hine’s empathy with the neglected him led to a job with the National Child Labor Committee. He traveled the country photographing children at work in factories in New England, at coal mines in Pennsylvania, and canneries on the Gulf Coast. Hine’s photographs helped secure child labor laws in this country.

From Touchstones of the Twentieth Century: A History of Photography at the University of Notre Dame (exhibition, 2020-21)

Unknown photographer
Lewis Hine photographing children in a slum
c. 1910
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
George Davison
1918
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

George Davison (19 September 1854 – 26 December 1930) was an English photographer, a proponent of impressionistic photography, a co-founder of the Linked Ring Brotherhood of British artists and a managing director of Kodak UK. He was also a millionaire, thanks to an early investment in Eastman Kodak.

Edith Tudor Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Gee Street, Finsbury
1936
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL
© Wolfgang Suschitzky

This photograph was published alongside Poodle Parlour, London (PGP 279.33B) in the satirical magazine Lilliput in 1939, offering a comparison between the living conditions of the urban poor and the care lavished on pets by their wealthy owners. The juxtaposition made a simple political point and encouraged the viewer to think about the unequal organisation of society. This was a rhetorical technique common in left-wing illustrated journals on the Continent. The Austrian magazine, Der Kuckuck, had published a similar story in 1931 comparing the living conditions of the Berlin poor with the more salubrious accommodation of the city’s dog home.

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Dessau, Germany
1945
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL
© Henri Cartier-Bresson, Magnum, HCB Fondation

Cartier-Bresson had been a prisoner of war in Germany for nearly three years. He tried to escape two times, and then on the third time was successful. And partly because of that experience he was commissioned by the US Office of War Information to make a film about the return of displaced persons and prisoners of war.

And this incident appears in the film. The cameraman is filming this scene, and Cartier-Bresson, is right next to him making his own pictures. This is at a displaced person’s camp. And the woman in the black dress had been denounced to the Gestapo by the woman she’s about to hit. And here they’re both telling their stories to the man on the right who’s obviously the man in authority.

And what’s typical in this picture of Cartier-Bresson’s best work after the war, is that it’s all boiled down to these three protagonists. The anger of the woman who had been betrayed totally saturates her body, just the way the shame and the guilt of the woman who had done the betraying occupies her body, right down to where she’s got her thumb inside her fist.

Peter Galassi on the Museum of Modern Art website

Richard Sadler (British, 1927-2020)
Weegee in Coventry, “Weegee the Famous”
1963
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Tony Ray-Jones (English, 1941-1972)
Auto Show, Daytona
1965
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

Unknown photographer
Portrait of Bill Brandt
c. 1979
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the National Media Museum/SSPL

National Media Museum
Bradford,
West Yorkshire,
BD1 1NQ

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Sunday 10.00 – 17.00

National Media Museum website

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2010 Art Blart in review

January 2011

Excellent news about the archive! Just received the information below from Wordpess – on average about 1,835 people a day looking at the website – and that means a big thank you to you, the readers and supporters. Makes it all worthwhile

Dr Marcus Bunyan

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how the archive did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads

WOW!

Crunchy numbers

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This archive was viewed about 670,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 29 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 116 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 394 posts.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were stumbleupon.com, neoteo.com, thisisnthappiness.com, facebook.com, and tumblr.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for diane arbus, gregory crewdson, man ray, ron mueck exhibition 2010, and robert frank.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1/ Exhibition: ‘East Side Stories. German Photographs 1950s – 1980s’ at Kicken Berlin April 2010

2/ Opening: ‘Ron Mueck’ at the National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne January 2010

3/ ‘Man Ray: Unconcerned, but not indifferent’ exhibition at The Hague Museum of Photography January 2009

4/ Exhibition: ‘Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s’ at Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin April 2009

5/ Exhibition: ‘Cecil Beaton: Portraits’ at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool August 2009

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Season’s greetings and a happy new year from art blart

December 2010

Many thankx to all the galleries that have supplied photographs throughout the year, to the curators, gallery directors and media people for their wonderful help and to you the readers for supporting the blog. Have a happy and safe festive season.

We look forward to posting and reviewing many more exhibitions in 2011!

Marcus

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Opening: ‘Ron Mueck’ at the National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 22nd January – 18th April, 2010

Ron Mueck (Australian b. 1958) 'Dead Dad' 1996-1997 (installation view) from the exhibition 'Ron Mueck' at the National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne, January - April, 2010

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Dead Dad (installation view)
1996-1997
Silicone, polyurethane, styrene, synthetic hair
Ed. 1/1
20 x 38 x 102cm
Stefan T. Edlis Collection, Chicago
© Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

You saw it first on Art Blart.

Many thankx to Sue, Erin, Alison and all the crew at the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me to the media opening (and for doing such a splendid job!) and to David Hurlston, Curator of Australian Art at the NGV, for allowing me to interview him.

The photographs of the exhibition proceed in chronological order. There are a couple of lovely photographs using long exposure (especially the very last photograph one of my favourites). Enjoy!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Ron Mueck (Australian b. 1958) 'Dead Dad' 1996-1997 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Dead Dad (installation views)
1996-1997
Silicone, polyurethane, styrene, synthetic hair
Ed. 1/1
20 x 38 x 102cm
Stefan T. Edlis Collection, Chicago
© Ron Mueck courtesy Anthony d’Offay, London
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'A girl' 2006 (installation view) from the exhibition 'Ron Mueck' at the National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne, January - April, 2010

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'A girl' 2006 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
A girl (installation views)
2006
Polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, synthetic hair, synthetic polymer paint
Second edition, artist’s proof
110 x 501 x 134.5cm
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Purchased with assistance from The Art Fund, 2007
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Wild Man' 2005 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Wild Man' 2005 (installation view detail)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Wild Man (installation views)
2005
Polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, aluminium, wood and synthetic hair
2850 x 1619 x 1080 mm
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Purchased with assistance from The Art Fund, 2008
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Mueck initially planned to make a figure who appeared confined, as if backed into a corner, but decided to make Wild Man after seeing an illustration of the colossal stone sculpture Appennino 1579-1580 (Villa di Pratolino, Vaglia, Italy) by the late Renaissance artist Giambologna. Appennino depicts a crouching hirsute river god, which inspired the oversized hairy ‘wild man’ of Mueck’s sculpture. The critic Anne Cranny-Francis notes that a wild man tends to be a reclusive individual afraid of human society and that this ‘might explain why [Mueck’s] large male figure – in one sense, the very image of the powerful white male – grips his chair, body rigid with tension, and stares over the heads of viewers in a paroxysm of fear’ (Cranny-Francis 2013, p. 6). The man’s nakedness adds to this sense of vulnerability, making him both physically and emotionally exposed.

Extract from Susan McAteer. “Ron Mueck: Wild Man,” on the Tate website February 2015 [Online] Cited 23/05/2019

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Two Women' 2005 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Two Women' 2005 (installation view detail)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Two Women (installation views)
2005
Polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, polyurethane, aluminium wire, steel, wool, cotton, nylon, synthetic hair, plastic, metal
Ed. 1/1
82.6 x 48.7 x 41.5cm (variable)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, Victorian Foundation for Living Australian Artists, 2007
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck’s Two women is an uncanny sculptural representation of two elderly female figures. The disarming realism of the work invites close scrutiny from which the viewer discovers Mueck’s virtuoso skill in rendering human features, costume details and the idiosyncratic attributes that form personality. Huddled close together, as if gently bracing themselves from the cold, the women peer outward with expressions that suggest both suspicion and vulnerability.

A strong component of fantasy exists in Mueck’s work as he deliberately subverts conventional paradigms of scale. Much like the characters of Gulliver’s Travels, Mueck’s figures are monumentally increased or dramatically reduced in size. Mueck has explained, ‘I never made life-size figures because it never seemed to be interesting. We meet life-size people every day’ (S. Tanguy, ‘The progress of Big man: A conversation with Ron Mueck’, Sculpture, vol. 22, no. 6, 2003). The effect, as in the case of Two women, intensifies the physical and emotional aura of his figures. The minute stature of the women creates a tension between artifice and reality that elicits a viscerally empathetic response from the viewer. His creations appear seemingly trapped in introverted emotional states as their physical poses, gestures and facial expressions reflect the inner world of private feelings and thoughts. Mueck’s figurative sculptures often explore the timeless themes of birth, ageing and death.

The craftsmanship with which Mueck constructs his sculptures adds significant impact to our viewing experience. This is very much apparent in Two women where each strand of hair is individually inserted into the characters’ heads; the clothes are specifically tailored to fit their anatomically proportioned, yet miniature bodies. Mueck has carefully fabricated the eyes of the women creating a transparent lens over a coloured iris and deep black pupil to astounding effect.

Extract from Alex Baker. “Ron Mueck’s Two women,” in Art Bulletin of Victoria 48, 29 January 2014 [Online] Cited 25/05/2019

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Woman with Sticks' 2008 (installation view detail)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Woman with Sticks (installation views)
2008
Mixed media
170 x 183 x 120cm
Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain, Paris
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

In January 2010, the National Gallery of Victoria will present a major exhibition of the work of internationally renowned sculptor Ron Mueck.

Known for his extraordinarily life-like creations, this exhibition will feature twelve sculptures by Mueck including four new works.

This will be the largest and most comprehensive Mueck exhibition ever to be held in Australia.

Frances Lindsay, NGV Deputy Director, said: “Since his dramatic entry onto the international art stage, Mueck has continued to astound audiences with his realistic, figurative sculptures and now occupies a unique and important place in the field of international contemporary art.”

David Hurlston, Curator Australian Art, said Ron Mueck’s poignant sculptures illustrate timeless human conditions from birth to demise.

“Mueck’s sculptures range from puckish portrayals of childhood innocence to acute observations of stages of life; from birth to adolescence, middle and old age, and even death. Many are solitary figures, psychological portraits of emotional intensity and of isolation,” said Mr Hurlston.

The exhibition will draw from Australian and international collections, highlights include: Mask II 2001/02, Man in a boat (2002), Old woman in bed (2000/02), Wild man (2005), Two women (2005), In bed (2005), and through the generosity of a private collector from the United States, the iconic work Dead Dad (1996/97).

In addition to these there will be a number of new works created specifically for this exhibition which will be unveiled for the first time in Melbourne.

In his early career Melbourne-born Mueck worked as a puppet maker, however since 1997 he has been entirely devoted to making sculpture. In 1996, he was ‘discovered’ by British advertising guru Charles Saatchi, who included Mueck’s Dead Dad as part of the history making Sensation exhibition the following year.

Mueck went on to represent Australia at the 2001 Venice Biennale, capturing worldwide attention for his 4.5 metre sculpture, Crouching Boy. Since then, he has become one of the most significant figures in the contemporary art world.

Ron Mueck will be on display at NGV International on St Kilda Road from 22 January until 18 April 2010.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website [Online] Cited 20/01/2010. No longer available online

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Man in a boat' 2002 (installation view detail)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Man in a boat (installation view details)
2002
Mixed media
159 x 138 x 425.5cm
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Youth' 2009 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian b. 1958)
Youth (installation view)
2009
Mixed media
65 x 28 x 16cm
Private collection
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation photograph of Ron Mueck's 'Youth' (2009) with 'Still life' (2009) in the background

Installation photogtaph of Ron Mueck's 'Youth' (2009) with 'Still life' (2009) in the background

Installation photographs of Ron Mueck’s Youth (2009) with Still life (2009) in the background
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Still life' 2009 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Still life' 2009 (installation view detail)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Still life (installation views)
2009
Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Old Woman in bed' 2002 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Old Woman in bed' 2002 (installation view detail)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Old Woman in bed (installation views)
2002
Polyester resin, fibreglass, silicone, polyurethane, synthetic hair, cotton, polyester, second edition, artist’s proof
25.4 x 94.0 x 53.9cm
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, purchased 2003
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958) 'Drift' 2009 (installation view)

Ron Mueck (Australian, b. 1958)
Drift (installation views)
2009
Mixed media
118 x 96 x 21cm
Private collection
© Ron Mueck
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation photograph of the Ron Mueck exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at left Woman with Sticks (2005) and at right Two Woman (2005) with A girl (2006) in the distance
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation photograph of the Ron Mueck exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria showing A girl (2006)
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

My favourite pic of the day!

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Melbourne’s Magnificent Dozen 2009

January 2010

Here’s my pick of the twelve best exhibitions in Melbourne for 2009 that featured on Art Blart (in no particular order) – and a few honourable mentions that very nearly made the list!

1. The Water Hole by Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger at ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Gerda Steiner (Swiss, b. 1967) and Jorg Lenzlinger (Swiss, b. 1964)
The Water Hole
2009

“The most effective bed has a small meteorite suspended in a net bag above it. The viewer slides underneath the ‘rock’ placing the meteorite about a foot or so above your face. The meteorite is brown, dark and heavy, swinging slightly above your ‘third eye’. You feel its weight pressing down on your energy, on your life force and you feel how old this object is, how far it has traveled, how fragile and mortal you are. It is a sobering and enlightening experience but what an experience it is!”

This was a magical and poignant exhibition that was a joy for children and adults alike. Children love it running around exploring the environments. Adults love it for it’s magical, witty and intelligent response to the problems facing our planet and our lives. A truly enjoyable interplanetary collision.

2. Ocean Without A Shore video installation by Bill Viola at The National Gallery of Victoria

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024) 'Ocean Without A Shore' 2007 video still

Installation photograph of Ocean Without A Shore at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

The resurrected are pensive, some wringing the hands, some staring into the light. One offers their hands to the viewer in supplication before the tips of the fingers touch the wall of water – the ends turning bright white as they push through the penumbrae of the interface. As they move forward the hands take on a stricken anguish, stretched out in rigour. Slowly the resurrected turn and return to the other side. We watch them as we watch our own mortality, life slipping away one day after another. Here is not the distraction of a commodified society, here is the fact of every human life: that we all pass.

The effect on the viewer is both sad but paradoxically uplifting. I cried …

These series of encounters at the intersection of life and death are worthy of the best work of this brilliant artist. He continues to astound with his prescience, addressing what is undeniable in the human condition. Long may he continue.

3. Rosalie Gascoigne at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

Rosalie Gascoigne (Australian born New Zealand, 1917-1999)
Sweet lovers
1990

This was a wonderful exhibition. Gascoigne rightly commands a place in the pantheon of Australian stars. She has left us with a legacy of music that evokes the rhythms, the air, the spaces and colours of our country. As she herself said,

“Look at what we have: Space, skies. You can never have too much of nothing.”

Nothing more, nothing less.

4. The Big Black Bubble paintings by Dale Frank at Anna Schwartz Gallery

Dale Frank (Australian, b. 1959)
Ryan Gosling
2008/2009

The artist offered the viewer the ability to generate their own resonances with the painting, to use the imagination of ‘equivalence’ to suggest what these paintings stand for – and also what else they stand for. States of being, of transformation, wonder and joy emerged in the playfulness of these works.

Ryan Gosling was a tour de force. With the poetic structure of an oil spill, the varnish forms intricate slick upon slick contours that are almost topographical in their mapping. The black oozes light, becomes ‘plastic’ black before your eyes, like the black of Rembrandt’s backgrounds, illusive, illuminative and hard to pin down – perpetually hanging there in two dripping rows, fixed but fluid at one and the same time (you can just see the suspensions in the photograph above).

This painting was one of the most overwhelming syntheses of art and nature, of universal forces that I have seen in recent contemporary art. This exhibition was an electric pulsating universe of life, landscape and transformation. Magnificent!

5. So It Goes by Laith McGregor at Helen Gory Galerie

Laith McGregor (Australian, b. 1977) 'The Last Bastion' 2009 (detail)

Laith McGregor (Australian, b. 1977)
The Last Bastion (detail)
2009

Simply spectacular!

I had never seen such art made using a biro before: truly inspiring.
Inventive, funny, poignant and outrageous this was a must see show of 2009.

6. triestement (more-is u thrill-o) by Domenico De Clario at John Buckley Gallery

Domenico de Clario (Australian born Italy, b. 1947)
o (la grande maison blanche – snow clouds massing)
2008/09

Painted in a limited colour palette of ochres, greys and blacks the works vibrate with energy. Cezanne like spatial representations are abstracted and the paint bleeds across the canvas forming a maze of buildings. Walls and hedges loom darkly over roadways, emanations of heads and figures float in the picture plane and the highlight white of snow hovers like a spectral figure above buildings. These are elemental paintings where the shadow has become light and the light is shadow, meanderings of the soul in space.

de Clario feels the fluid relationship between substance and appearance; he understands that Utrillo is embedded in the position of each building and stone, in the cadences and rhymes of the paintings of Montmarte. de Clario interprets this knowledge in a Zen like rendition of shadow substance in his paintings. Everything has it’s place without possession of here and there, dark and light.

For my part it was my soul responding to the canvases. I was absorbed into their fabric. As in the dark night of the soul my outer shell gave way to an inner spirituality stripped of the distance between viewer and painting. I felt communion with this man, Utrillo, with this art, de Clario, that brought a sense of revelation in the immersion, like a baptism in the waters of dark light. For art this is a fantastic achievement.

7. McLean Edwards: Songs from the Ghost Ship at Karen Woodury Gallery

McLean Edwards (Australian, b. 1972)
Venus
2009

These heterogeneous paintings were a knockout with their wonderful, layered presence – they really command the viewer to look at them and celebrate the characters within them. Whimsical, ironic and full of humour these phantasmagorical images of creatures cast adrift with the night sky as background are fabulous assemblages of colour, form and storytelling.

My friend and I really enjoyed this exhibition. We were captivated by these songs, going back to the work again and again to tease out the details, to feel connection to the work. These are not lonely isolated figures but sublime emanations of inner states of being expertly rendered in glorious colour. And they made us laugh – what more could you ask for!

8. Tacita Dean at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)

Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Michael Hamburger' 2007

Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
Michael Hamburger [Still]
16mm colour anamorphic, optical sound
28 minutes
2007

“One can see echoes of Sebald’s work in that of Tacita Dean – the personal narratives accompanied by mythical and historical stories and pictures. The tactility of Hamburger’s voice and hands, his caressing of the apples with the summary justice of the tossing away of rotten apples to stop them ruining the rest of the crop is arresting and holds you transfixed. Old varieties and old hands mixed with the old technology of film make for a nostalgic combination … Dean implicitly understands how objects can be elegies for fleeting lives.”

Tacita Dean is a fantastic artist whose work examines the measure of things, the vibrations of spirit in the FLUX of experience. Her work has a trance-like quality that is heavy with nostalgia and memory and reflects the machine-ations of contemporary life. In her languorous and dense work Dean teases out the significance of insignificant actions/events and imparts meaning and life to them. This is no small achievement!

As an exhibition this was an intense and moving experience.

9. Ivy photographs by Jane Burton at Karen Woodbury Gallery

Jane Burton (Australian, b. 1966)
Ivy #2
2009

I feel that in these photographs with their facelessness and the non-reflection of the mirror investigate notions of ‘Theoria’ – a Greek emphasis on the vision or contemplation of God where theoria is the lifting up of the individual out of time and space and created being and through contemplative prayer into the presence of God. In fact the whole series of photographs can be understood through this conceptualisation – not just remembrances of past time, not a blind contemplation on existence but a lifting up out of time and space into the an’other’ dark but enlightening presence.

The greatest wonder of this series is that the photographs magically reveal themselves again and again over time. Despite (or because of) the references to other artists, the beauty of Burton’s work is that she has made it her own. The photographs have her signature, her voice as an artist and it is an informed voice; this just makes the resonances, the vibrations of energy within the work all the more potent and absorbing. I loved them.

10. Sweet Complicity by eX de Medici at Karen Woodbury Gallery

eX de Medici (Australia, b. 1959) 'Tooth and claw' 2009 (detail)

eX de Medici (Australia, b. 1959)
Tooth and claw (detail)
2009

In other less skilled artist’s hands the subject matter could become cliched and trite but here de Medici balances the disparate elements in her compositions and brings the subject matter alive – sinuously jumping off the paper, entwining the viewer in their delicious ironies, all of us sweetly complicit in the terror war (send more meat, send more meat!), fighting tooth and nail to keep urban realities at arm’s length. The dark desires that these works contain possess an aesthetic beauty that swallows us up so that we, too, become ‘Barbarians All’.

11. Emily Kame Kngwarreye: The Person and her Paintings at DACOU Aboriginal Art

Emily Kame Kngwarreye (Australian, 1910-1996)
Wildflower
1994

The paintings were painted horizontally (like the painter Jackson Pollock who intuitively accessed the spiritual realm) and evidence a horizontal consciousness not a hierarchical one. Knowledge is not privileged over wisdom. There is a balance between knowledge and wisdom – the knowledge gained through a life well lived and the wisdom of ancient stories that represent the intimacy of living on this world. The patterns and diversities of life compliment each other, are in balance.

Wisdom comes from the Indo-European root verb weid, “to see,” the same root from which words like vision come. In this sense these are “Vedic” paintings in that they are ancient, sacred teachings, Veda meaning literally “I have seen.”

On this day I saw. I felt.

12. Unforced Intimacies by Patricia Piccinini at Tolarno Galleries

Patricia Piccinini (Australian, b. 1965) 'Doubting Thomas' 2008 (detail)

Patricia Piccinini (Australian, b. 1965)
Doubting Thomas (detail)
2008

Patricia Piccinini (Australian, b. 1965) 'Doubting Thomas' 2008

Patricia Piccinini (Australian, b. 1965)
Doubting Thomas
Silicone, fibreglass, human hair, clothing, chair
2008

The terrains the Piccinini interrogates (nature and artifice, biogenetics, cloning, stem cell research, consumer culture) are a rematerialisation of the actual world through morphological ‘mapping’ onto the genomes of the future. Morphogenetic fields seem to surround the work with an intense aura; surrounded by this aura the animals and children become more spiritual in their silence. Experiencing this new world promotes an evolution in the way in which we conceive the future possibilities of life on this earth, this brave but mutably surreal new world.

This was truly one of the best exhibitions of the year in Melbourne.

Honorable mentions

~ Climbing the Walls and Other Actions by Clare Rae at the Centre for Contemporary Photography
In these photographs action is opposed with stillness, danger opposed with suspension; the boundaries of space, both of the body and the environment, the interior and the exterior, memory and dream, are changed.

~ Johannes Kuhnen: a survey of innovation at RMIT Gallery
We stood transfixed before this work, peering closely at it and gasping in appreciation of the beauty, technical proficiency and pure poetry of the pieces.

~ Double Infinitives by Marco Fusinato at Anna Schwartz Gallery
The images are literally ripped from the matrix of time and space and become the dot dot dot of the addendum. What Fusinato does so excellently is to make us pause and stare, to recognize the flatness of these figures and the quietness of violence that surrounds us.

~ all about … blooming by JUNKO GO at Gallery 101
Go’s musings on the existential nature of our being are both full and empty at one and the same time and help us contemplate the link to the breath of the sublime.

~ Mood Bomb by Louise Paramor at Nellie Castan Gallery
They are dream states that allow the viewer to create their own narrative with the title of the works offering gentle guides along the way. These are wonderfully evocative paintings.

~ New 09 at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
Finally you sit on the aluminium benches and contemplate in silence all that has come before and wonder what just hit you in a tidal wave of feelings, immediacies and emotions. The Doing and Undoing of Things.

~ My Jesus Lets Me Rub His Belly by Martin Smith at Sophie Gannon Gallery
At the end of days, when all is said and done, the funny diatribes with their ambiguous photographs are homily and heretic and together form a more inclusive body of bliss: ‘And also with you and you and you and you’.

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