Emma Davies (Australian, b. 1968) Sekai (meaning ‘be humorous’) 2009
A stimulating exhibition by Emma Davies at Craft Victoria of polypropylene industrial netting and packaging that has been heated, moulded, sculpted and literally morphed into these fantastical sculptures, inspired by the artist’s experiences when visiting Johannesburg in South Africa as part of the South Project. Davies evokes the mysterious and the bizarre in her figures, making the commonplace into something uncommon, taking her themes from the relics of bush medicine present in the street markets: the medicine market of Johannesburg full of dried animal bones, skulls, skins and bottles of alchemistic objects.
Despite their comforting South African names (translated into English as ‘hope’, ‘faith’, ‘quiet, tranquil’, ‘lady’, ‘chief’, ‘prince’ for example) these extremely individual figurative ‘presences’ have a powerful melancholic affect on the viewer. Their elongated long legged and armed, no necked forms create dark eyeless creatures that crouch in rusted boxes or sit on wooden posts with their legs and arms hanging, folded. They seem lonely and sad despite their titles, perhaps reflecting the harsh realities of a life of poverty on the streets of Soweto.
Two figures on wooden blocks seem to walk aimlessly, placed on large rough industrial tables with huge wheels while another figure sits up a rusted ladder propped against the wall. A group of figures are clustered together on top of large wooden posts of different heights, some with arms round each other for comfort, others with black or red feathers sprouting from shoulders, legs or wearing a red feathered skirt. These creatures create a marvellous group of contemplative wandering minstrels while behind them their eerie shadows fall on the gallery wall.
The crystalline nature to the surface of the creatures, like sparkling coal, reminds me of the work of William Kentridge, his white industrial protagonist Felix haunted by images of black workers deep underground mining coal (see Mine (1991) where his coffee plunger goes down into the ground through the bodies of black people). Some of the figures bat like ears also bring to mind the work of Francisco de Goya and specifically his work Los Caprichos (The Whims), plate 43 from the series of 80 etchings published in 1799 titled The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters. The artist described the collection as an exposé of “the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilised society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual.”
As Goya began to sympathise with the suffering of the peasants so Davies seems to have been transformed by what she saw around her during her visit, trying to make sense of a foreign culture, dreaming the sleep of reason but surrounded and invaded by a world in which the natural and unnatural has fused and morphed.
I really liked this exhibition and the presence of these figures. I am obviously not alone as the show is almost sold out. A visit to these disturbing, enfolding creatures is recommended.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All photographs courtesy of Craft Victoria (thankyou Amy Brand!) and taken by their photographer Alexia Skok. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Emma Davies (Australian, b. 1968) Tariro (meaning ‘hope’) 2009
Emma Davies (Australian, b. 1968) Rutendo (detail – meaning ‘faith’) 2009
Francisco de Goya (Spanish, 1746-1828) Los Caprichos plate 43 from the series El sueño de la razón produce monstros 1799 Etching and aquatint Height: 21.3cm (8.3″) Width: 15.1cm (5.9″) Museo del Prado, Madrid
Emma Davies (Australian, b. 1968) Zola (detail – meaning ‘quiet, tranquil’) 2009
Emma Davies (Australian, b. 1968) Group with from left to right: Enitan (person of story), Ntombi (lady), Kgosi (chief), Nkosana (prince), Lucky and Alaba (second child after twins) 2009
Emma Davies (Australian, b. 1968) Nkosana (detail – meaning ‘prince’) 2009
Craft Victoria Watson Place, off Flinders Lane, Melbourne 3000 Phone: 03 9650 7775
Exhibition dates: 16th June – 18th September, 2009
Artist duo George (left) and Gilbert (right) pose in front of their work “The Church of England” in Berlin, Germany
That pair of agent provocateurs are at it again!
Marcus
Many thankx to Arndt & Partner for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) DATING 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) BRITISHISM 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) JESUS JACK 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) ROUND FLAG 2008 Mixed media
As the international tour of the last Gilbert & George retrospective (2007-2009) did not include Berlin, Arndt & Partner are now presenting a solo exhibition of the celebrity artist duo in its gallery rooms behind the Hamburger Bahnhof. It is the first Gilbert & George solo show in Berlin for 14 years. The exhibition features a selection of 20 large-scale pieces from the Jack Freak Pictures, the largest Gilbert & George group of pictures to date. The thrust of the content is given by the colours and shapes of the Union Jack flag that dominate the bulk of the pictures as well as the recurring motive of medals, emblems and trees. In the Jack Freak Pictures the artist duo explores aspects of nationhood and of the sentient individual in the nets of society. In his essay published in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition the British writer Michael Bracewell describes these pictures as “the most iconic, philosophically astute and visually violent works that Gilbert & George have ever created …”
Gilbert & George, who met as students of sculpture at St. Martin’s School of Art in London 42 years ago, embarked on a joint artistic career that was to encompass a wide range of media from drawing to video and their trademark pictures. Further, the pair revolutionised the concept of sculpture by presenting themselves as “living sculptures” dressed in the quintessentially British tailored suit, shirt and tie. But it was their monumental trademark pictures composed of a grid like array of smaller images which they began to create in the early 70s that first brought them international fame. Figures, cityscapes, symbols, plants, bodily fluids, excrements and text interlock in pictorial messages as visually powerful as their content is provocative. The pictures, which started out in black and white and later assumed increasingly luminous, bold colours, generally also depict portraits of the artists themselves and seize on taboo subjects like sexuality, race, religion and national identity with a brash and fearless candour.
The Jack Freak Pictures again feature the bodies and/or faces of the artists. In these compositions, their bodies function as stylised representatives of the individual in society, whose relationship to social norms and categories, to national, religious and sexual identification processes is relentlessly explored and commented upon. Departing from their earlier oeuvre, some of their new pictures split the raw images into much smaller fragments before merging them into new forms. The result is a fascinating kaleidoscopic mix of the monstrously grotesque with an intricate ornamental structure reminiscent of sacred art. In ever new variations, Gilbert & George order the signs and fragments of social life they find in their neighbourhood – the multicultural East End of London – where solidarity and friendship are as visible as intolerance and marginalisation.
Press release from the Arndt & Partner website [Online] Cited 04/07/2009. No longer available online
Gilbert & George installation photographs of their exhibition Jack Freak Pictures at Arndt & Partner, Berlin
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) JESUS SUITS 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) CHURCH OF ENGLAND 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) POSTER DANCE 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) REALM 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) SPIDER 2008 Mixed media
Gilbert & George (Gilbert Prousch, English born Italy, b. 1943) (George Passmore, English, b. 1942) UNION WALL DANCE 2008 Mixed media
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Rings 1971
This is a superlative exhibition, one of the highlights of the year so far in Melbourne.
The exhibition presents work from the early 1970s to contemporary work and evidences the breadth of vision of this master craftsman and artist, the arc of his investigation showing a consistency of feeling for the energy and form of his materials over many decades. Technically the work is superb; conceptually the work transcends the boundaries of jewellery and becomes something else altogether: it becomes magical.
Kuhnen’s use of colour in his favoured anodised aluminium material is exquisite, the perfection of his forms flawless. His fabulous Vessels reminding me of the ancient Neolithic standing stone circles at Stonehenge in their shape and use of vertical buttresses in different materials (such stainless steel and granite) that intersect the oval forms. His Boxes are like small ancient reliquaries, objects for holding ashes worked with a delicacy, simplicity and feeling for form and colour that is absolutely beautiful and consistent with the containment of energy within their structure.
I went with Marianne Cseh a jeweller friend of mine. 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. This exhibition is highly recommended and not to be missed!
Now showing with the international SCHMUCK jewellery exhibition from Germany.
A book to accompany the exhibition is available from the RMIT Gallery.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to RMIT Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Ring 1972 Stainless steel, synthetic ruby disc
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952)
Brooch 2003 Anodised aluminium, monel
Ring 1972 Stainless steel, synthetic ruby disc
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Boxes 1980
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Box and pendant 1980
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Tray 1986 Anodised aluminium, titanium, stainless steel
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Centrepiece 1987
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Centrepiece 1991 Anodised aluminium, silver, monel: fabricated
In his work as a jeweller, object maker and photographer, Johannes Kuhnen is engaged with the interpretation and manipulation of a precise visual language of forms. The dramatic curvilinear shape of this centrepiece has been designed to emphasise the particular visual qualities of its materials and to fulfil its role as a low, but commanding central presence on a table. The vivid, iridescent colour of its anodised aluminium rim is designed to interact with differing light conditions, while the technical and precious qualities of its monel and silver elements play against each other. This orchestration of metals is underpinned with an unseen but precise and ingenious inner structure, giving this object weight and functional strength.
Johannes Kuhnen has made a pioneering contribution to Australian design and gold and silver smithing through his commitment as a generous educator and innovative practitioner. This exhibition will create linkages between his earlier works, some of which was made in Germany prior to migrating to Australia and new work specifically produced for this exhibition and this will be done both with objects and through a catalogue / monograph to be launched at the opening venue. The exhibition will borrow from Australian public and private collections to facilitate the demonstration of connecting design elements in the work from both significant streams in Kuhnen’s work in jewellery and hollowware.
Text from the RMIT Gallery website [Online] Cited 02/07/2009. No longer available online
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Vessel 2007 Anodised aluminium, titanium, stainless steel 11.2 h x 84.5 w x 21.0 d cm Weight 14 kg
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Vessel 2008 Anodised aluminium, titanium, stainless steel
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Vessel 2009 Anodised aluminium, titanium, stainless steel
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Armring 1981 Anodised aluminium 9.8 h x 10.4 w cm
Johannes Kuhnen (Australian born Germany, b. 1952) Armring 1990 Armring, anodised aluminium, gold 750, granite
Many thankx to the Paine Art Center for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Alvin Langdon Coburn (English born United States, 1882-1966) The Singer Building, New York c. 1910 Gum bichromate over platinum print
Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958) Nautilus 1927 Gelatin silver print 9 1/2 by 7 1/2 in. (24 by 19cm)
Like their painter counterparts, many photographers experimented with abstraction in the 1920s and 1930s, exploring relations of form, tonality, and space. Here, Weston isolates a nautilus shell against a solid black ground, creating a study of curves, subtle shadows, and contrasts between light and dark. As in many of his close-ups of natural forms, the nautilus appears both recognisable and yet strangely unfamiliar. Unlike the rigorously nonrepresentational compositions of photographers like László Moholy-Nagy, Weston’s abstractions always remained grounded in objects from the real world; as he wrote in 1930, “To see the Thing Itself is essential.”
Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website
Nautilus is now recognised as one of Weston’s greatest photographs, but all of his images of shells have a greater-than-life quality to them. Weston biographer Ben Maddow has said that what is so remarkable about them “is not in the closeness nor in the monumentality of the forms; or at least, not in these alone. It is instead in the particular light, almost an inward luminescence, that he saw implicit in them before he put them before the lens. Glowing with an interior life … one is seeing more than form.”
Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874-1940) Italian family looking for lost baggage, Ellis Island 1905 Gelatin silver print
The largest exhibition of masterpieces of American photography ever presented in Wisconsin, Seeing Ourselves features over a hundred iconic images from the internationally acclaimed George Eastman House Collections of Rochester, New York. This extraordinary exhibition dramatically illustrates our country’s landscape, people, culture, and historic events through works ranging from vast western scenes to fascinating documentary photographs to intimate celebrity portraits. Artists represented include such masters of the medium as Ansel Adams, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Weston, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and dozens of other accomplished photographers.
Spanning more than 150 years of photography, Seeing Ourselves is organised according to five broad themes: American Masterpieces, American Faces, America at War, America the Beautiful, and American Families. Each section features renowned photographs documenting the American experience. The exhibition begins with “American Masterpieces,” which sheds light on celebrated images like Yosemite Valley, Summer by Ansel Adams, Nautilus by Edward Weston, and The Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz. Other highlights include Oshkosh native Lewis Hine’s Powerhouse Mechanic, a dynamic image symbolising the arrival of a new Industrial Age, and Dorothea Lange’s unforgettable photograph Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, which gave a human face to poverty and suffering during the Great Depression.
“American Faces” illustrates the diversity of our nation, including subjects ranging from Native Americans whose ancestors have lived here for thousands of years to immigrants at Ellis Island who had just arrived in America that day. Photographs of everyday people are juxtaposed with portraits of illustrious political and civil rights leaders, artists, celebrities, and athletes, including Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, and many other familiar faces. Master photographers who portrayed these individuals include Mathew Brady, Edward S. Curtis, Walker Evans, Richard Avedon, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen.
Some of the most famous, memorable, and shocking images in the history of American photography are photographs of war. While photographs of war may be difficult to look at, they serve as an important record of America’s past. “America at War” displays images from the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, as well as contemporary photographs created in response to 9/11.
“America the Beautiful” features timeless photographs that capture the beauty and power of unspoiled nature, as well as scenes of westward expansion, urban America, and the intimate spaces we call home. Dramatic images of Alaskan glaciers, majestic western views, and tranquil dunes are contrasted with big-city skyscrapers, small-town neighborhoods, and backyard gardens. Major works in this section include Alvin Langdon Coburn’s beautifully atmospheric view of New York’s Singer Building and landscapes by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.
The final section, “American Families,” brings together families from all walks of life, exploring their differences and commonalities. A variety of examples by such notable photographers as Weegee, Lewis Hine, Aaron Siskind, Margaret Bourke-White, and Mary Ellen Mark are included. Some works portray idealised scenes of American life, while others capture a glimpse of everyday life and the serious challenges many families face, such as poverty or illness. Highlights include Hine’s photograph of an Italian family seeking lost luggage at Ellis Island and a tender portrait of a mother and son from the series Black in America by Eli Reed, an award-winning member of Magnum, the prestigious photojournalists’ cooperative.
Seeing Ourselves: Masterpieces of American Photography from George Eastman House Collections is organised by George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film and is made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the American Masterpieces program. George Eastman House is the world’s oldest photography museum, founded in 1947 on the estate of Kodak founder George Eastman, the father of popular photography. The museum has unparalleled collections of 400,000 photographs from 14,000 photographers dating from the beginnings of the medium to the present day.”
Text from The Paine Art Center website [Online] Cited 01/07/2009. No longer available online
Benedict J. Fernandez (American, 1936-2021) Dick Gregory with MLK [Martin Luther King, JR.] New Politics Convention, Chicago, ILL. October, 1967 1967 Gelatin silver print
Eli Reed (American, b. 1946) A Mother and Her Son at Her Home In Bed Sty in Brooklyn c. 1990 Gelatin silver print
Apocrypha (from the Greek word ἀπόκρυφα, meaning “those having been hidden away”) are texts of uncertain authenticity, or writings where the authorship is questioned.
Julie Davis (Australian, b. 1959) and Alex Rizkalla (Australian, b. 1950) Apocrypha #1 (left) and Apocrypha #4 (right) 2008
“Intuitively we know the definition of the output from this process lies hidden within each object, seemingly carved into the underside of their skin, although we cannot see it. But actually it is not carved, it is the three-dimensional tracing of the original. The original becomes a throw-away. It is obsolete. The point of origin lies no longer within an object but at the heart of the creative impulse.”
Vanessa Mooney
Apocrypha is an interesting, if slight, exhibition of eleven photographs by Julie Davis and Alex Rizkalla at Place Gallery in Richmond. Conceptually the work is resolved if not pushed to any great depth, the small photographs of sarcophagi like casements and moulds addressing issues surrounding the absence / presence of the original object and the subsequent loss of identity. In their masking, the objects photographed hide an inner identity that has gone missing; the headless figures, like faceless mummies, protect something that has existed since early man – the inner spiritual machinations of belief – that are embedded within the existential nature of our being. Identity has been rubbed out and spirit is splitting apart the moulds trying to escape the confines of mortality, only held in check by the wooden pegs and ropes.
Like the sutures of the human skull, the marks on the casements (see below right image) try to align form across space and time but these objects are grounded in a contextless backgrounds, seemingly floating free of earthly constraints. Here we have a double tracing – that of the tracing of the original object that has been thrown away (see Vanessa Mooney quotation above) and the tracing of the indexicality of the object by the photograph – the re-presentation of an original that no longer exists. There is a double loss through this re-retracing that fits perfectly with the title Apocrypha – as the photographs become texts of uncertain authenticity.
Where the exhibition is less successful is in the physical presence of the photographs and their aesthetic qualities. While Vanessa Mooney asserts that the photographs are “meticulous in their detail and exact in their depth and texture” this assertion is untrue. From a technical point of view the photographs are soft in focus and lack depth of field. The ropes are fuzzy and the lack of depth of field in the focus plane from front to back adds to a lack of presence that the photographs needed to counterbalance the conceptual idea of apocrypha. I am also unsure about the scale of the photographs – there seems something in-between about the size of the images, neither here nor there. Aesthetically they needed either more presence (through being bigger), or more intensity through a jewel like nature in being smaller, again to counterbalance the conceptual themes. Finally, being surrounded by these eleven photographs in the gallery gives you the feeling of a ‘one shot’ idea that needed further investigation and refinement, an idea that needed to be pushed further. While the actual ideas themselves are interesting the work itself is too simple, too slight to hold the attention and reveal layers of meaning over time.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Place Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.
Julie Davis (Australian, b. 1959) and Alex Rizkalla (Australian, b. 1950) Apocrypha #5 (left) and Apocrypha #7 (right) 2008
The Father, The Son And Apocrypha
We all have faith that we must lodge somewhere: you; the microscope, me; the earth, and the artist? There are two stories present. The first is Apocrypha, a series of works by Davies and Rizkalla and the second is something you cannot see but will soon know.
Davies and Rizkalla present to us Apocrypha; a series of photographs that are meticulous in their detail and exact in their depth and texture. It is an evocative title and encapsulates the resonance of the objects. What we can see is clear – plaster moulds used by someone, somewhere for casting objects. The clarity of the details of rope, wedges of wood and the depth of the seam tell us of the real working nature of them. The inversion here from background process to foreground subject matter is not for irony’s sake but to evoke the simultaneous banality and sacredness of the transformative creative process. It is documented honestly before the viewer, and yet, the mystery remains. Intuitively we know the definition of the output from this process lies hidden within each object, seemingly carved into the underside of their skin, although we cannot see it. But actually it is not carved, it is the three-dimensional tracing of the original. The original becomes a throw-away. It is obsolete. The point of origin lies no longer within an object but at the heart of the creative impulse.
Tony Scalzo, my father-in-law, was drawn to this process. While the creation of a religious icon amused his communist leanings the irresistible pull of the transformation from dust and water to artefact must have, I feel, fulfilled a greater need to live through making. Countless times he would present to us his recent army of saints or holy persons (Padre Pio was a boom time) to be sold through his community, and would scoff and laugh at how he could make an object that to others was an icon. He would point to the shed, the latex, the plaster dust as if to dispel the mystery, and yet the mystery remained.
Perhaps the final mystery is the process, the collaboration that has come about since Tony passed away and his son Stefano came into possession of the simple and unusual collection. Stefano like his father is drawn to the creative process. So innately aware of the artist, his father, he approached Julie and Alex with these as gifts that are, in a way, not his to give. As a custodian might he passed on the objects and communicated his intuitive knowledge of their meaning. One plus one equals three. The result, Apocrypha, is like a window that was obscured and now has been opened. We can see with clarity what was unseen, but known, before. Apocrypha silently demonstrates the entwining of faith and mystery in the creative life of all.”
Vanessa Mooney
Text from the Place Gallery website [Online] Cited 09/03/2019. No longer available online
Julie Davis (Australian, b 1959) and Alex Rizkalla (Australian, b. 1950) Apocrypha #8 (left) and Apocrypha #9 (right) 2008
Installation view of LE MONDE v. DER MOND by Matthew Hale at The Narrows, Melbourne with n.n. (2008) centre bottom, andPage 93 of MIRIAM DIVORCEE (2008) centre right
Below is the only text I could find on the work – some of which was displayed in London earlier this year.
DER MOND v LE MONDE is Mathew Hale’s first solo exhibition in London for five years. It consists of five works: one two-projector and one three-projector slide piece; a constructed painting (that could equally be described as a wall-mounted sculpture); and two large collage works …
Hale’s work has many possible points of departure: a found photograph, a scrap of paper, a page torn from an instructive and obscure book, a bit of out-moded pornography, some anachronistic advertising from the 1970s or 1980s and so forth. Once plucked from a huge collection of such material amassed in his domestic studio space, the work evolves like an unplanned journey – both moving away and turning back on itself … The path of discovery in Hale’s work is the subject of his work, providing it with narrative and process.
With its roots in the collage traditions of political photomontage, dadaist assemblage and free associative surrealism, Hale’s work prioritises process over methodology or style. It activates a complex web of references that takes in history, politics, literature, and philosophy, as much as it does sex, religion, art, architecture and popular culture. To engage with the work is to become carried along by clues that lead to other clues and then circuitously lead somewhere else unexpected yet somehow familiar. Sometimes the clues are visual, sometimes they are language based, often they are both. Even when the work is finished and exhibited it is in a state of flux, the meaning is not fixed. Hale likes slippage of meaning and this constant state of ambiguity and openness for (mis)interpretation or confusion. He explains the title of the show as follows: ‘[in German] … and strikingly weirdly, “der Mond” means “The Moon” and, as we all know, “Le Monde” means “The Earth”. How can a word flip so totally by crossing a border? I am making a work for the show which hinges on their being apparently identical (almost) and yet meaning precisely the opposite – I wonder how it happened.’
Text from the London exhibition of this work (note with title reversed!), on the Peer website [Online] Cited 23/06/2009. No longer available online
Matthew Hale (British, b. 1962) Page 93 of MIRIAM DIVORCEE 2008 Paper collage 69 x 103cm
Matthew Hale (British, b. 1962) Page 150 of MIRIAM DIVORCEE (detail) 2008 Paper collage
Matthew Hale (British, b. 1962) n.n. 2008 Rifle, paper collage 69 x 153cm
Matthew Hale (British, b. 1962) Page 145 of MRS. GILLRAY 2009 Paper collage
Matthew Hale (British, b. 1962) Page 48 of DIE NEUE MIRIAM 2008 Paper collage
Review in Art Monthly, June 2009 from the Peer website [Online] Cited 23/06/2009. No longer available online
Shining brightly in the firmament the star of the show is, undoubtedly, the supremely talented Francesca Woodman. What an artist – both photographer and subject, here and there, enigmatic, sensual, psychotic, beautiful, playful, and desperate. Who is she; who are we.
Baldly put, “Francesca Woodman’s photographs explore issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings… Found objects and suggestive props are carefully placed to create unsettling, surreal or claustrophobic scenarios. Her photographs are produced in thematic series’, relating to specific props, places or situations. In combining performance, play and self-exposure, Woodman’s photographs create extreme and often disturbing psychological states.”
Her photographs are so much more. They promote in the attentive viewer a ghostly insistence that you could be her – in vulnerability, in presence, in fear of suffering, for our death. Who are we that is represented, what is our place in this lonely world, how do we interact with our shadow? “In concealing or encrypting her subjects she reminds the viewer that photographs flatten and distort, never offering the whole truth about a subject.” No. This is no truth.
It is that they offer glimpses of another world, not flattened or distorted, but a lens to focus on the microcosm of the infinite spirit. The personal as universal truth.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Scottish National Gallery 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.
Throughout 2009, 18 museums and galleries across the UK will be showing over 30 ARTIST ROOMS from the collection created by the dealer and collector, Anthony d’Offay, and acquired by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland in February 2008. This is the first time a national collection has been shared and shown simultaneously across the UK, and has only been made possible through the exceptional generosity of independent charity The Art Fund and, in Scotland, of the Scottish Government.
The opening displays at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh this spring will include the work of Vija Celmins, Ellen Gallagher, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, Andy Warhol, and Francesca Woodman. Highlights will include Celmins’ beautiful, delicate images of seas, deserts and the night sky, a complete series of landscape and portrait paintings by the American painter Alex Katz and Francesca Woodman’s intimate, surrealist-influenced photographs. Damien Hirst, the most prominent British artist of today, will feature in an expanded display across several rooms. This will bring together works from ARTIST ROOMS – such as the iconic Away from the Flock (an early example of Hirst’s animals in formaldehyde) and a recent butterfly painting – with additional loans from further collections.
The ARTIST ROOMS display at the Gallery of Modern Art is dedicated to Vija Celmins’ ethereal images of seas, deserts and the night sky, a complete series of landscape and portrait paintings by Alex Katz, and Francesca Woodman’s intimate, surrealist-influenced photographs. Photographs by Warhol and paintings by Ellen Gallagher will also be included. Damien Hirst will feature in an expanded display, which will bring together works from ARTIST ROOMS – such as the iconic Away from the Flock and a recent butterfly painting – with additional loans from further collections.
American artist Vija Celmins makes paintings, drawings and prints. Using charcoal, graphite and erasers she produces delicate images based on photographs of the sea, deserts, the night sky and other natural phenomena.
The ARTIST ROOMS collection comprises 24 works on paper by Celmins, including three unique drawings. Web #1 is typical of her fragile images and is the first of nine works on the theme of the spider’s web. It is accompanied by a series of four ‘web’ prints which echo the web-like construction of the universe. Other works in the collection include an important series from the entitled Concentric Bearings which explores different images of turning space.
Celmins works focus on something small and individual in the context of vastness. The images they depict seem fragile because they record a specific human glimpse through a telescope or camera which is temporary and frozen in time. …
Damien Hirst is the most prominent artist to have emerged from the British art scene in the 1990s. Hirst’s work forces viewers to question their understanding of issues such as the fragility of life, our reluctance to confront death and decay and other dilemmas of human existence.
He is best known for his Natural History works – large-scale sculptures featuring dead animals floating in Minimalist looking vitrines – but also for his mirrored pharmacy cabinets lined with shelves full of evenly spaced drug bottles, pills, sea shells or cigarette butts, and his paintings, which he produces in series.
An example of these, included in ARTIST ROOMS, is the early Controlled Substances Key Painting (Spot 4a). Also included in ARTIST ROOMS is the key work Away from the Flock, featuring a sheep floating in formaldehyde. The large butterfly diptych Monument to the Living and the Dead, 2006 was made specifically for ARTIST ROOMS. …
American photographer Francesca Woodman has eighteen rare vintage black and white photographs in ARTIST ROOMS. They have a timeless unique quality. The artist began taking photographs at the age of thirteen and though she was only twenty two when she took her own life, she left behind a substantial body of work.
Francesca Woodman’s photographs explore issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings. She puts herself in the frame most often, although these are not conventional self-portraits as she is either partially hidden, or concealed by slow exposures that blur her moving figure into a ghostly presence.
Found objects and suggestive props are carefully placed to create unsettling, surreal or claustrophobic scenarios. Her photographs are produced in thematic series’, relating to specific props, places or situations. In combining performance, play and self-exposure, Woodman’s photographs create extreme and often disturbing psychological states.
Andy Warhol is one of the most influential American artists to emerge in the post-war period. ARTIST ROOMS includes an impressive selection of 232 works which span the artist’s entire work. This display focuses on a group of stitched photographs from the collection.
After graduating and moving to New York in 1949, Warhol quickly became established as one of the city’s most sought after commercial illustrators, working for magazines such as Glamour and Harper’s Bazaar. However, it was in the early-sixties that he began to produce the work for which he is most celebrated.
As the most famous proponent of Pop Art, his earliest ‘pop’ works depict consumer goods and images from the press. This evolved to reveal his enduring fascination with celebrity and mortality, with many of his most powerful images touching on these themes.
ARTIST ROOMS comprises a superb array of important works representing all phases of Warhol’s career and a cross-section of media. Warhol explored the medium of photography extensively and began producing stitched photographs in 1986. Returning to his earlier predilection for repetition, Warhol used multiple prints of the same photographs that he then had sewn together to form a composite work of art. By repeating the same image, Warhol could extend the abstract design to the whole work and emphasise the broader significance of what might seem to be peculiarly singular and oddball.”
Text from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art website [Online] Cited 25/06/2009. No longer available online
Celmins’s intense monochromatic images, based on photographs, focus on small and individual marks in the context of vastness. The images seem fragile because they record a specific human glimpse through a camera which is ephemeral and frozen in time. Celmins’s serial exploration of her subjects, including spider webs, allows the artist to exploit the distinct characteristics of the variety of media she uses. This meticulous, translucent web is typical of her apparently fragile, ephemeral images. These images echo the web-like construction of the universe, a further preoccupation of the artist. Celmins has explained: “Maybe I identify with the spider. I’m the kind of person who works on something forever and then works on the same image again the next day.”
Damien Hirst (English, b. 1965) Controlled Substances Key Painting (Spot 4a) 1994 Acrylic paint on canvas Support: 1220 x 1224 x 40 mm Frame: 1307 x 1303 x 81 mm Acquired jointly with the Tate through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
This canvas is constructed using a grid of dots of different colours, accompanied by letters in alphabetical order that seem to dissect and reorganise the very matter of painting into cells. Hirst has said that he only painted five of his spot paintings himself, since he found them so boring to paint and could not do them as well as his assistants. But the key thing about these works is their conceptual clarity – the potentiality of making an infinite number and variety of paintings, based on size and colour of the dots and size and shape of the canvases. Like Andy Warhol, whom Hirst greatly admires, Hirst has set up a sort of factory with assistants to help him make his works of arts. Like Warhol, Hirst retains central control of what and how it is produced.
Woodman lies naked, in a vulnerable state, the curve of her body echoing the curved form of the eel. She has printed several similar versions of this image with her body on either side of the eel. While Woodman was studying in Rome between 1977 and 1978 she came into contact with the Symbolist work of Max Klinger, whose influence can be seen in this series. The image is sexually charged, yet in placing herself on both sides of the camera Woodman hovers between being in control and being defenceless, exploring the ways in which femininity can be portrayed. The photograph is not a self-portrait in the conventional sense, as it explores the possibilities of representation, instead of revealing the artist’s identity.
Crouched against a dilapidated interior, Woodman conceals her face with her hand. The combination between the vintage pattern of her dress and the peeling wall behind her create an antique, romantic air. Woodman’s photographs exhibit many influences, from Symbolism and Surrealism to fashion photography and Baroque painting. She explores issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings. Woodman usually puts herself in the frame, although these are not conventional self-portraits, since as she is either partially hidden, or concealed by slow exposures that blur her moving figure into a ghostly presence. This underlying fragility is emphasised by the small and intimate format of the photographs.
ARTISTS ROOMS Essay
American photographer Francesca Woodman has eighteen rare vintage black and white photographs in ARTIST ROOMS, acquired from a collection once owned by the artist’s boyfriend. Woodman’s photographs exhibit many influences, from symbolism and surrealism to fashion photography and Baroque painting. They have a timeless quality that is ethereal and unique.
The artist began taking photographs at the age of thirteen, and though she was only twenty two when she took her own life, she left behind a substantial body of work. Francesca Woodman’s photographs explore issues of gender and self, looking at the representation of the body in relation to its surroundings.
She puts herself in the frame most often, although these are not conventional self-portraits as she is either partially hidden, or concealed by slow exposures that blur her moving figure into a ghostly presence. This underlying vulnerability is further emphasised by the small and intimate format of the photographs. We often see her in otherwise deserted interior spaces, where her body seems to merge with its surroundings, covered by sections of peeling wallpaper, half hidden behind the flat plane of a door, or crouching over a mirror. Found objects and suggestive props are carefully placed to create unsettling, surreal or claustrophobic scenarios.
Her photographs are produced in thematic series, relating to specific props, places or situations. Woodman was exposed to the symbolic work of Max Klinger whilst studying in Rome from 1977-78 and his influence can clearly be seen in many photographic series, such as Eel Series, Roma and Angel Series, Roma.
In combining performance, play and self-exposure, Woodman’s photographs create extreme and often disturbing psychological states. In concealing or encrypting her subjects she reminds the viewer that photographs flatten and distort, never offering the whole truth about a subject.
Text from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art website [Online] Cited 05/03/2019
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Trash cans 1986 4 photographs, gelatin silver print on paper and thread Support: 698 x 543 mm Acquired jointly with the Tate through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Warhol’s stitched photographs depict a wide range of subjects including signs, objects, celebrities, nude models and buildings. Trash Cans is one of many that focus on everyday and ordinary objects and can be related to some of Warhol’s best-known pop works, in which common objects and consumer goods (for example Brillo boxes, Coca-Cola bottles, and Campbell’s soup cans) are isolated from their everyday context so as to foreground their individual aesthetic value. Many of Warhol’s pop works are also composed of repetitious images, for example his screenprints in which identical images are repeated numerous times across a canvas, such as Marilyn Diptych 1962 (Tate T03093). It is thus useful to compare Trash Cans with Warhol’s screenprints featuring multiple images of Campbell’s soup cans – especially given the similarities between the shapes of the different receptacles.
Text from the Tate website
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) I am blind 1976-1986 9 photographs, gelatin silver print on paper Frame: 1315 x 1066 x 26 mm Acquired jointly with the Tate through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987) Venus in Shell 1976-1986 4 photographs, gelatin silver print on paper and thread 700 x 542 mm Acquired jointly with the Tate through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR
Opening hours: Open daily, 10am – 5pm Admission free
Kay Westhues (American) CSX railroad building, Walkerton 2005
I really like this work. An insightful eye, sensitive, tapped into the community that the artist is documenting. Attuned to its inflections and incongruities, the isolation and loneliness of a particular culture in time and place. There are further strong photographs from the series on the Kay Westhues website. It’s well worth your time looking through these excellent photographs. And observing the wonderful light!
Kay Westhues (American) Man with patriotic cast, Original Famous Fish of Stroh 2005
Kay Westhues (American) Knox laundromat 2005
The Snite Museum of Art announces the opening of the exhibition: Fourteen Places to Eat: a Narrative: Photographing Rural Culture in the Midwest, opening on Sunday, May 31,2009.
Kay Westhues is a photographer who is interested in documenting the ways in which rural tradition and history are interpreted and transformed in the present day. Kay shares her intention for this series of work:
“For the past five years I have been working on a series of photographs depicting rural culture in Indiana and the Midwest. This project was inspired by my memories of growing up on a farm in Walkerton, Indiana, and observing first hand the shifting cultural identity that has occurred over time and through changing economic development. I moved back to Walkerton in order to help care for my ageing parents in 2001.
These photos mirror my personal history, but I am also capturing a people’s history grounded in a sense of place. My intention is to celebrate rural life, without idealising it.
The overall theme since the project’s inception is the effect of the demise of local economies that have historically sustained rural communities. Many of my images contain the remains of an earlier time, when locally owned stores and family farms were the norm. Today chain stores and agribusiness are prevalent in rural communities. These communities are struggling to thrive in the global economy, and my images reflect that reality.
Most recently I have focused on the complex relationship between farmers and domesticated animals. I make many of my images at Animal Swap Meets and sale barns, places where animals are bought and sold. Family farms are quickly being replaced by large-scale food production, and these events still draw smaller farmers and the local people who support them.”
Why fourteen places to eat?
“One of my biggest complaints after moving to Walkerton was that there were not enough places to eat out. Or, rather, practically no places to eat out. So I was happy when news arrived that a new restaurant was opening there. Imagine my surprise when I read a letter to the editor in the local paper against the new restaurant. The letter stated we already had enough places to eat in this town. The writer counted a total of fourteen places to eat, which included four restaurants, three gas stations, four bars, a truck stop, a convenience mart, and a bowling alley.”
Ms. Westhues studied photography at Rhode Island School of Design and Indiana University, Bloomington. She has a BS degree in Photography and Ethnocentrism from the Indiana University Individualised Major Program (1994), and an MS in Instructional Systems Technology at Indiana University (1998). She currently lives in Elkhart, Indiana, and is completing a five-year project photographing rural culture in the Midwest. This series is a visual exploration of the ways rural identity is defined in contemporary society.
Press release from the Snite Museum of Art Cited 20/06/2009. No longer available online
Kay Westhues (American) Chicken bingo, Francesville Fall Festival 2005
Kay Westhues (American) Patriotic hammers ($3.00) 2005
Kay Westhues (American) Parked trailer, Ligonier 2006
Kay Westhues (American) Lunch at the Crockpot, Walkerton (The Young and the Restless) 2007
Kay Westhues (American) Momence Speed Wash, Momence IL 2007
Kay Westhues (American) Mary Ann Rubio, Family Cafe, Knox 2007
The Snite Museum of Art at University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Untitled (New York City) 1929-1933 Gelatin silver print 6 1/2 x 4 7/16 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001
What a fantastic exhibition! Thank you to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for allowing me to reproduce the wonderful photographs below, many from photographers that I have never heard of before.
Lloyd Ullberg (American, 1904-1996) PSFS Building, Philadelphia c. 1932-1933 Gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 10 x 7 3/8 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund, 1999
At the turn of the 20th century when they first began to appear, skyscrapers were seen as symbols of modernity and testaments to human achievement. Stretching the limits of popular imagination, they captured the attention of visual artists working in a variety of mediums. This summer the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Skyscrapers: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs of the Early Twentieth Century, an exhibition that traces the rise of the American skyscraper as an iconic image. The exhibition will feature more than 50 works from the Museum’s collection, dating from 1908 to 1941, which demonstrate the many ways artists chose to portray the new giants in their landscape.
Skyscrapers includes prints by John Marin and Charles Sheeler, photographs by Berenice Abbott and Alfred Stieglitz, and drawings by Earl Horter and Abraham Walkowitz. The works in Skyscrapers reflect a wide range of styles and practices, from Walkowitz’s loosely drawn “New York Improvisations” (1910) to Abbott’s luminous photograph “New York at Night” (c. 1932), which captures the dazzling allure of the city’s glowing evening skyline. The combination of mediums included in the show allows the viewer to consider the relationship between drawing, printmaking, and photography in this dynamic period.
“The visual impact of skyscrapers on the modern urban landscape is unmistakable, and for more than a century artists have been engaging with this theme,” John Vick, The Margaret R. Mainwaring Curatorial Fellow in the Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs and the exhibition’s organiser, said, noting that the Museum’s collection includes well over 500 works related to skyscrapers. Vick added that “their distinctive contours and exaggerated scale offered artists both a chance to experiment with modernist aesthetics and a subject on which to project personal or collective ideas and emotions.”
The exhibition also offers a view into the interaction of architecture and urban development with art’s role as a form of documentation. Among the famous buildings featured are Chicago’s gothic-ornamented Tribune Tower, New York City’s Art Deco Empire State Building, and Philadelphia’s modernist PSFS Building. An atmospheric etching of a rainy nighttime scene at One Broad Street in Philadelphia by artist Allan Randall Freelon (American, 1895-1960) shows how this important intersection at the heart of the city would have appeared in the 1930s.
The towering, occasionally menacing, physical presence of these structures is a frequent visual theme in the works – whether in Howard Norton Cook’s woodcut “Skyscraper” (1929, below) or Sherril Schell’s photograph “Window Reflection – French Building” dating from 1930-1932. Horter’s graphite drawing “Manhattan Skyline” (1916) shows a row of newly-built towers thrusting skyward in strong, vertical lines and overshadowing the residential rooftops in the foreground, an image that suggests the city’s emergence as a financial and commercial giant.
Other works take a more abstract approach, exploring the visual exciting patterns created by these massive new structures. Such works include Marin’s 1913 and 1917 prints of the Woolworth Building and Herbert Johnson’s aerial photograph of building rooftops from c. 1930-1932.
Philadelphia Museum of Art press release [Online] Cited 19/06/2009. No longer available online
Earl Horter (American, 1880-1940) Manhattan Skyline c. 1916 Graphite on cream wove paper Sheet: 11 7/16 x 8 3/4 inches (29.1 x 22.2cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art Gift of Carl Zigrosser, 1953
Like many of the drawings and etchings of New York made by Horter while he lived in the city during the first two decades of this century, this view of the Manhattan skyline was shown in his first one-man exhibition at the New York gallery of Frederick Keppel and Company in 1916. It was organised by Carl Zigrosser, research librarian at Keppel, who later became this Museum’s first curator of prints and drawings. Zigrosser bought the drawing from the exhibition and donated it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art thirty-seven years later.
Wendell MacRae (American, 1896-1980) Summer c. 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 6 9/16 x 4 5/8 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001
Stella Simon (American, 1878-1973) 6th Avenue c. 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 9 1/2 x 7 3/16 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001
Allan Randall Freelon (American, 1895-1960) Number One Broad Street c. 1934 Aquatint with roulette and burnishing Plate: 11 7/8 × 9 13/16 inches (30.2 × 24.9cm) Sheet: 15 1/8 × 12 1/16 inches (38.4 × 30.6cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art Purchased with the Thomas Skelton Harrison Fund, 1943
Sherril Schell (American, 1877-1964) Buildings on West 35th Street c. 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 8 x 6 5/16 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001
Howard Norton Cook (American, 1901-1980) Skyscraper 1929 Woodcut Image: 17 15/16 x 8 5/8 inches (45.6 x 21.9cm) Sheet: 19 1/16 x 9 3/4 inches (48.4 x 24.8cm) Philadelphia Museum of Art Gift of Carl Zigrosser, 1960
Sherril Schell (American, 1877-1964) Window Reflection – French Building c. 1930-1932 Gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 7 15/16 x 6 1/8 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001
Ralph Steiner (American, 1899-1986) Untitled (New York City) 1931 Gelatin silver print Image/Sheet/Mount (With Black Border from Negative): 9 15/16 x 7 15/16 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art The Lynne and Harold Honickman Gift of the Julien Levy Collection, 2001
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) New York at Night c. 1932 Gelatin silver print Image and sheet: 13 3/8 x 10 5/8 inches Philadelphia Museum of Art Gift of Theodore T. Newbold in memory of Lee Witkin, 1984
Philadelphia Museum of Art 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, PA 19130
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Fallen Oak Tree 2008 From the series Hampstead Inkjet print 27 x 24 inches (68.6 x 61cm) Edition of 5
Variations on a theme
Whether McFarland’s photographs are “straight” or composites, there always seems to an unnerving feel to them, a formal frontality that empowers the viewer into trying to unlock the photographs secret, like an enigmatic puzzle. Everything is presented front on, square to the camera, no oblique angles, relying in the straight photographs on the scale of the accumulated blocks of information, and in the composites, in the very unlikely, even theatrical, staging of the people within the mise en scène.
These are very cinematic photographs, some, literally, with their panoramic aesthetic, others built by assembling their scudding skies and stiff, neatly placed people. Too neatly placed in my opinion but that’s McFarland’s hook, his aesthetic cough which prompts the viewer to question the veracity of the image, its link to the photographs indexical reality. His multiple exposures push the boundaries of truth or dare, hyperreal solutions to a disengaged world. Personally, I prefer his straight photographs which are built on a fabulous eye, a masterful understanding of pictorial space (monumental elements held in balance) and wonderful previsualisation. You don’t need anything more.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Regen Projects for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) The Admiral’s House as seen from the Upper Garden at Fenton House 2006 From the series Hampstead Inkjet print Edition of 5
“Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Canadian artist Scott McFarland. This exhibition will feature new photographs including 3 large panorama works, smaller works from the “Hampstead” series, and introduce the new “Niagara” series.
Scott McFarland’s photography reconsiders the traditional concept of a photograph as the depiction of a single captured moment in time. Through digital means he is able to manipulate composition, colour, light, space, shape, and form. McFarland’s photographs combine multiple negatives to represent simultaneous temporalities and interweave selected elements into a cohesive whole. Several different moments are packed into what appears to be one densely constructed instant. The photographs are meticulously crafted illusions created within the formal language of documentary photography.
McFarland’s consideration of photography and the built picture was brought about by the artist’s own understanding of the artificial “nature” found in built environments such as gardens and zoos. Taking the relationship of the constructed space/constructed image one step further, McFarland has photographed a modernist architectural landmark: the Berthold Lubetkin designed penguin pool at the London zoo. Through two very distinct works, McFarland investigates the elliptical structure of the famous penguin pool vis-à-vis the elliptical / arcing motion of his camera rotating on a tripod. One photograph is an objective colour rendering where the camera has been left level while rotating; the other is a larger black and white version where the camera arcs along a non-level plane distorting and altering the curve of the structure from right to left.
The new square format photographs from McFarland’s “Niagara” series have a rough unfinished quality unlike any photographs he has taken to date. These softer focus images with odd shifts in light and glare are location studies for the large panorama A Horse Drawn Hearse, Queens Royal Tours, 174 Anne, Niagara on the Lake, Ontario (2009, below). This work depicts an old carriage business and its surroundings during the dead of Canadian winter. In this visually captivating work, a black funeral carriage contrasts against the white snow. The acreage, surrounded by newer suburban homes, evokes the question of how long can this structure resist the modern urban pressures it faces. These straight photographs presented alongside his precise digitally mastered compositions illustrate how the photographic process and the history of art and photography have always informed McFarland’s work.
“Over the last decade, Scott McFarland has produced bodies of work that engage with different aspects of photography … McFarland’s approach is both descriptive and metaphoric … The images, rich in cultural significance, express the complementary workings of conceptual and aesthetic factors all the while holding various characteristics of art and photography in ambiguous relation.”
Andrea Kunard. Scott McFarland: A Cultivated View, published by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 2009, p. 12.
Text from the Regen Projects press release [Online] Cited 16/06/2009. No longer available online.
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) A Horse Drawn Hearse, Queens Royal Tours, 174 Anne, Niagara on the Lake, Ontario 2009 From the series Niagara Inkjet print 59.5 x 124 inches (151.1 x 315cm) Edition of 5
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Boathouse with Moonlight 2002 From the series Boathouse Digital C-print 71 x 91 inches (180 x 231cm) Edition of 5, 2 AP
“Boathouse with Moonlight” is an exploration of the technical advancements afforded by digital photography, created by assembling multiple exposures taken over the space of two hours under the light of a full moon. Unlike traditional photography, this image does not represent one specific moment captured at a particular site; rather, it shows an accumulation of moments that have been manipulated and layered to create a revised version of the boathouse and its surroundings. McFarland’s use of multiple exposures to produce the final image emphasises not only the duration of the photographic act, but also the many facets of the boathouse’s character. This type of building on British Columbia’s “Sunshine Coast” is disappearing with the construction of new, suburban-style retirement housing.
Text from the National Gallery of Canada website [Online] Cited 02/03/2019
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Gorse and Broom, West Heath, Hampstead 2006 From the series Hampstead Inkjet print Edition of 5
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Women Drying Laundry on the Gorse, Vale of Health, Hampstead Heath 2007 From the series Hampstead Inkjet print 29 x 45 inches (73.7 x 114.3cm) Edition of 5
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Inspecting, Allan O’connor Searches for Botrytis cinerea 2003 From the series Gardens Digital C-print 40 x 48 inches (102 x 122cm) Edition of 7
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Orchard View with the Effects of Seasons (Variation #1) 2003-2006 From the series Gardens Digital C-print 42 x 122 inches (106.7 x 309.9cm) Edition of 3
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) [Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif] 2005 From the series Empire Inkjet print
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) Echinocactus grusonii [Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif] 2006 From the series Empire Inkjet print 24.5 x 27.5 inches (62 x 70cm) Edition of 3 Private collection/Vancouver Art Gallery
This picture comes from Empire, a series on desert vegetation shot in the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif. Henry E. Huntington, an art collector who made his fortune building railroads, founded the garden in 1919.
“The plantings [of the garden] are dense, and the soil is mostly hidden beneath the thriving vegetation,” writes Grant Arnold in a catalogue essay for the exhibition, “the fullness of the planting continually reminding the visitor of Huntington’s beneficence.” To many gallery visitors, however, these images of lush desert vegetation will simply be appealing to the eye.
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) The Granite Bowl in the Berlin Lust Garden 2006 Inkjet print 43 x 62 inches (109.2 x 157.5cm) Edition of 5
At first the photograph appeared to be a simple scene, one of no importance. The two young children, obviously related based on their similar physical features, seemed a bit awkward and posed, but otherwise, I thought it to be a snapshot, much like the one I took of the bowl while in Berlin. Upon learning how McFarland created this and many of his other photographs, I learned how complex of a scene this really is. McFarland uses multiple negatives, often taken over a matter of days, weeks, and even months, and combines them digitally into a seamless print. His interest is in breaking through the concept of a photograph being an image of a single instant in time and space.
A fuller narrative is created as well. With just one negative, there may only be one or two people depicted. We may just have the dog with his owner half shown, or even only half of the brother-sister group. But by overlapping the various negatives, Mr McFarland manipulates his work into a greater piece. We can now ask ourselves, why are the brother and sister so psychologically distant? Or, who is the small girl with the accordion and where is her mother? Is her mother the woman with the baby carriage? How long has that man been sleeping under the bowl? These are all questions that can be asked together because the negatives are combined that couldn’t be asked if we had just the single frame.
Scott McFarland (Canadian, b. 1975) View of Vale of Health, looking towards Hampstead 2007 From the series Hampstead Inkjet print 27 x 42.5 inches (68.6 x 108 cm) Edition of 5
With the stiff figures of a historical painting, Scott McFarland’s View of Vale of Health, Looking Towards Hampstead muddles ideas of what’s real and what’s not.
From the get-go, painting and photography have been inextricably bound together. The Pictorialists tried to make their photographs look like paintings. The Futurists, in their paintings, mimicked the blurred and segmented movement found in Etienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotographs. The photorealists created paintings whose subject was the photograph itself. And in his large-scale, backlit photo-transparencies, Jeff Wall has alluded to paintings by Nicolas Poussin, Edouard Manet, and Paul Cézanne, among others. The digital age has done nothing to diminish each medium’s obsession with the other.
This continued entwining of art forms is evident in Scott McFarland’s computer-montaged photographs, on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery. So is the parallel entanglement of nature and culture. Both conditions are conspicuous in his 2006 series, “Hampstead”, inspired by the landscapes of the early-19th-century English painter John Constable. McFarland’s colour photos, shot in various locations around London’s immense Hampstead Heath, pay homage to Constable’s attraction to the same place. They also play variations on that painter’s rendering of multiple versions of the same scene, and on his open-air studies of the changing effects of light and weather. …
Over the past decade, McFarland’s working methods have changed from straightforward analog photography to the creation of highly manipulated images in which he digitally splices together multiple segments of the same landscape or structure, shot over a period of days, weeks, or even months. In both variations of Orchard View With the Effects of the Seasons, for instance, the blossoms and foliage of spring, summer, and fall are contained within the same seamless panorama.
The digital assist means that there are no constraints of time, space, or documentary veracity in McFarland’s work: he can build whatever impossible pictures he wants and they will look “real”. At least until they’re closely scrutinised, revealing incongruities of light, shadow, time, and figuration. In this sense, his art challenges our understanding of the nature of the photograph and its relationship with the truth. There’s nothing really new about this project – as long as photography’s been around, it’s been manipulated by its practitioners. Photoshop, however, has added a vast digital dimension to the darkroom antics of earlier photo artists.
![Benedict J. Fernandez (American, 1936-2021) 'Dick Gregory with MLK [Martin Luther King, JR.] New Politics Convention, Chicago, ILL. October, 1967' 1967](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/benedict-j.-fernandez-dick-gregory-with-mlk.jpg "Benedict J. Fernandez (American, 1936-2021) 'Dick Gregory with MLK [Martin Luther King, JR.] New Politics Convention, Chicago, ILL. October, 1967' 1967")
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