Review: ‘Cineraria’ by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 28th July – 22nd August, 2009

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Ruby Heart Starling' 2008 from the exhibition 'Cineraria' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne, July - Aug, 2009

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Ruby Heart Starling
2008
Starling, sterling silver, black rhodium & gold plate, rubies, antique frame
30 x 35 x 18cm

 

 

This is an itsy-bitsy show by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery in Richmond, Melbourne. Offering a menagerie of macabre stuffed animals and conceptual ideas the exhibition fails to coalesce into a satisfying vision. It features many ideas that are not fully investigated and incorporated into the corporeal body of the work.

We have, variously, The Funerary Urn/Cinerarium, The Ossuary, Skeletons, Black, Victorian Funerary Customs, Feathers, Taxidermy, Time, Eggs and Religion. We also have stuffed animals, cigar boxes, lace and silver, pelts and columns, jet necklaces and Victorian glass domes, glass eyes and ruby hearts to name but a few. The viewer is overwhelmed by ideas and materials.

When individual pieces excel the work is magical: the delicate and disturbing Stillborn Angel (2009, below) curled in a foetal position with appended sparrows wings is a knockout. The large suspended raven of Night’s Plutonian Shore (2009, above) effectively evinces the feeling of the shores of the underworld that the title, taken from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, reflects on.

Other pieces only half succeed. Piglet (2009, below) is a nice idea with its lace snout and beaded wings sitting on a bed of feathers awaiting judgement but somehow the elements don’t click into place. Further work are just one shot ideas that really lead nowhere. For example Cat Rug (2008, below) features black crystals in the mouth of a taxidermied cat that lies splayed on a plinth on the gallery floor. And, so … Silver Rook (2008, below) is a rook whose bones have been cast in silver, with another ruby heart, suspended in mid-air in the gallery space. Again an interesting idea that really doesn’t translate into any dialogue that is substantial or interesting.

Another problem with the work is the technical proficiency of some of the pieces. The cast silver front legs and ribs of The Anatomy of a Rabbit (2008, below) are of poor quality and detract from what should have been the delicacy of the skeletal bones of the work. The bronze lion cartouche on the egg shaped Lion Urn (2009) fails to fit the curved shape of the egg – it is just attached at the top most point and sits proud of the egg shape beneath. Surely someone with an eye for detail and a sense of context, perfection and pride in the work they make would know that the cartouche should have been made to fit the shape underneath.

Despite its fashionable position hovering between craft, jewellery and installation this is ‘art’ in need of a good reappraisal. My suggestion would be to take one idea, only one, and investigate it fully in a range of work that is thematically linked and beautifully made. Instead of multiplying the ideas and materials that are used, simplify the conceptual theme and at the same time layer the work so it has more complexity, so that it reveals itself over time. You only have to look at the work of Mari Funaki in the previous post or the simple but conceptually complex photographs of Matthias Koch in the German photography review to understand that LESS IS MORE!

There are positive signs here and I look forward to seeing the development of the artist over the next few years.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Sophie Gannon Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Night's Plutonian Shore' 2009 from the exhibition 'Cineraria' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne, July - Aug, 2009

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Night’s Plutonian Shore
2009
Tasmanian Forest Raven, black garnets, cotton, sterling silver, amethyst

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'L'enfant (Infant Funerary Urn)' 2009 from the exhibition 'Cineraria' by Julia deVille at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne, July - Aug, 2009

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
L’enfant (Infant Funerary Urn)
2009
Ostrich egg, sterling silver, ostrich plumes and black garnet
35 x 12 x 12cm

 

Julia de Ville 'Cineraria' installation view at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

Julia de Ville 'Cineraria' installation view at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

 

Julia deVille Cineraria installation views at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Piglet' 2009

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Piglet
2009
Piglet, antique lace, pins and feathers
25 x 23 x 13cm

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Cat Rug' 2008

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Cat Rug
2008
Cat, glitter and fibreglass
100 x 60 x 8cm

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Sympathy' 2008

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Sympathy
2008

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Silver Rook' 2008

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Silver Rook
2008
Sterling silver, rubies
30 x 25 x 35cm

 

 

Cinerarium

n. pl. Cineraria
A place for keeping the ashes of a cremated body.

Cineraria
n. any of several horticultural varieties of a composite plant, Senecio hybridus, of the Canary Islands, having clusters of flowers with
white, blue, purple, red, or variegated rays.

Origin: 1590-1600; < NL, fem. of cinerarius ashen, equiv. to L ciner- (s. of cinis ashes) + -rius -ary; so named from ash-coloured down on leaves.

CINERARIA is a study of the ritual and sentiment behind funerary customs from various cultures and eras.

 

Notes on inspirations

The Funerary Urn/Cinerarium: Funerary Urns have been used since the times of the ancient Greeks and are still used today. After death, the body is cremated and the ashes are collected in the urn.

The Ossuary: An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary. The greatly reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than if the original coffins were left as is. This was a common practice in post plague Europe in the 14th-16th Centuries.

Skeletons: Human skeletons and sometimes non-human animal skeletons and skulls are often used as blunt images of death. The skull and crossbones (Death’s Head) motif has been used among Europeans as a symbol of piracy, poison and most commonly, human mortality.

Black: In the West, the colour used for death and mourning is black. Black is associated with the underworld and evil. Kali, the Hindu god of destruction, is depicted as black.

Victorian Funerary Customs:

~ A wreath of laurel, yew or boxwood tied with crape or black ribbons would be hung on the front door to alert passers by that a death had occurred

~ The use of flowers and candles helped to mask unpleasant odours in the room before embalming became common

~ White was a popular colour for the funeral of a child. White gloves, ostrich plumes and a white coffin were the standard

Feathers: In Egyptian culture a recently deceased persons soul had to be as light as a feather to pass the judgment of Ma’at. Ma’at (Maet, Mayet) is the Egyptian goddess of truth, justice and the underworld. She is often portrayed as wearing a feather, a symbol of truth, on her head. She passed judgment over the souls of the dead in the Judgment Hall of Osiris. She also weighted up the soul against a feather. The “Law of Ma’at” was the basis of civil laws in ancient Egypt. If it failed, the soul was sent into the underworld. Ma’at’s symbol, an ostrich feather, stands for order and truth.

Taxidermy: Taxidermy to me is a modern form of preservation, a way for life to continue on after death, in a symbolic visual form.

The Raven: In many cultures for thousands of years, the Raven has been seen symbol of death. This is largely due to the Raven feeding on carrion. Edgar Allan Poe has used this symbolism in his poem, “The Raven”.

Time: Less blunt symbols of death frequently allude to the passage of time and the fragility of life. Clocks, hourglasses, sundials, and other timepieces call to mind that time is passing. Similarly, a candle both marks the passage of time, and bears witness that it will eventually burn itself out. These sorts of symbols were often incorporated into vanitas paintings, a variety of early still life.

Eggs: The egg has been a symbol of the start of new life for over 2,500 years, dating back to the ancient Persians. I have chosen egg shapes and even one Ostrich egg to represent the cycle of life, the beginning and the end.

Religion: Religion has played a large part in many funerary customs and beliefs. I am particularly interested in the Memento Mori period of the 16th-18th centuries. In a Calvinistic Europe, when the plague was a not too distant memory, a constant preoccupation with death became a fashionable devotional trend.

Julia deVille

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'Stillborn Angel' 2009

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
Stillborn Angel
2009
Stillborn puppy, sparrow wings and sterling silver
13 x 10 x 5cm

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982) 'The Anatomy of a Rabbit' 2008

 

Julia deVille (New Zealand, b. 1982)
The Anatomy of a Rabbit
2008
Rabbit, sterling silver, rubies, glitter and mahogany
30 x 30 x 30cm

 

Julia de Ville 'Cineraria' installation views at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

 

Julia deVille Cineraria installation view at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Sophie Gannon Gallery
2, Albert Street, Richmond, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

Sophie Gannon Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Hunted and Gathered: Photographs’ from the Private Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson at Modernism, San Franciso

Exhibition dates: 9th July – 29th August, 2009

 

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

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

Anonymous photographer. 'The Dancer, Ted Shawn, Boston Dance Theater' 1929 from the exhibition 'Hunted and Gathered: Photographs' from the Private Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson at Modernism, San Franciso, July - August, 2009

 

Anonymous photographer
The Dancer, Ted Shawn, Boston Dance Theater
1929
Vintage gelatin silver print
9 5/8 x 7 1/4″

 

Gérard Decaux. 'Abbe Lane' Rome, c. 1955 from the exhibition 'Hunted and Gathered: Photographs' from the Private Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson at Modernism, San Franciso, July - August, 2009

 

Gérard Decaux
Abbe Lane
Rome, c. 1955
Vintage gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 8 1/2″

 

Clarence Sinclair Bull (American, 1896-1979) 'Greta Garbo' c. 1935 from the exhibition 'Hunted and Gathered: Photographs' from the Private Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson at Modernism, San Franciso, July - August, 2009

 

Clarence Sinclair Bull (American, 1896-1979)
Greta Garbo
c. 1935
Gelatin silver print, printed later
14 x 11″

 

Clarence Sinclair Bull was born in Sun River, Montana in 1896. His career began when Samuel Goldwyn hired him in the 1920 to photograph publicity stills of the MGM stars. He is most famous for his photographs of Greta Garbo taken during the years of 1926-1941. Bull’s first portrait of Garbo was a costume study for the Flesh and the Devil, in September 1926.

Bull was able to study with the great Western painter, Charles Marion Russell. He also served as an assistant cameraman in 1918. Bull was skilled in the areas of lighting, retouching, and printing. He was most commonly credited as “C.S. Bull.” Bull died on June 8, 1979 in Los Angeles, California, aged 83.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Laure Albin Guillot (French, 1879-1962) 'La Flamme (Woman's Head)' c. 1935

 

Laure Albin Guillot (French, 1879-1962)
La Flamme (Woman’s Head)
c. 1935
Vintage gelatin silver print
6 3/8 x 4 3/8″

 

Anonymous photographer. 'Acrobats' c. 1920

 

Anonymous photographer
Acrobats
c. 1920
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 5/8 x 5 5/8″

 

Pierre Nobel. 'Still Life' c. 1935

 

Pierre Nobel
Still Life
c. 1935
Vintage gelatin silver print mounted on paper
9 1/4 x 6 3/4″

 

Charles Jones (English, 1866-1959) 'Plum, Laxton Early Red' c. 1910

 

Charles Jones (English, 1866-1959)
Plum, Laxton Early Red
c. 1910
Vintage gelatin silver print from a glass plate negative
6 x 4 1/4″

 

 

Modernism presents a wonderful and intriguing selection of photographs from the private collection of Robert Flynn Johnson. Robert Flynn Johnson is emeritus faculty in the Printmaking department. He is the curator in charge of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, a position he has held since 1975.

This exhibition coincides with the publication of his second book on vernacular photography, The Face in the Lens: Anonymous Photographs (University of California Press).

“When I am asked what it takes to become an accomplished collector, it is not the qualities of knowledge, judgment or that elusive term “taste” that comes to mind. Instead, it is the ability to be curious that is the crucial element in the makeup of a true collector – the ability to ask questions, to learn, and to get answers regarding works of art that catch your eye and move your emotions,” Robert Flynn Johnson said.

He added, “For more than thirty-five years I have followed my curiosity in passionately seeking out photographs that have stirred my imagination. Some of them have been by great artistic masters of the medium, while others have been anonymous photographic orphans that have nothing going for them but the image itself. Both types of photographs are included in this exhibition.”

“I have made a varied, and some may say eccentric, selection of images. From a heart-stopping snapshot of acrobats posed in a three-man handstand perched on the ledge of the 108th floor of the Empire State building, to a tender portrait of Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio that captures the instant before their lips meet in their first kiss as a married couple, They these pictures are a true reflection of my collecting philosophy that is attracted to profound, beautiful, humorous, and absurd aspects of life and art.”

“Nevertheless, I hope they these works convey some of the visual surprise and delight to you that I felt when I first saw each and every one of them.”

Oscar Wilde once said that the only person that liked all art equally was an auctioneer! I do not expect viewers to appreciate all the photographs in this exhibition, but through my visual curiosity in collecting them over time, I did, and that is why they are here together today.

Text from Artdaily.org website

 

Carelton Watkins (American, 1829-1916) 'San Francisco' c. 1868

 

Carelton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
San Francisco
c. 1868
Vintage albumen print
8 x 12 1/8″

 

Mammoth-plate photograph of San Francisco taken from the top of Telegraph Hill showing the Golden Gate in the background.

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
'Landscape, Environs of Paris (Étang, Ville-d'Avray)' 1917

 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Landscape, Environs of Paris (Étang, Ville-d’Avray)
1917
vintage albumen print
7 x 9 1/4″

 

Anonymous photogapher (Czechoslovakia). 'Train' c. 1930

 

Anonymous photographer (Czechoslovakia)
Train
c. 1930
Vintage gelatin silver print
9 1/4 x 11 5/8″

 

Anonymous photographer (United Kingdom). 'Train' c. 1930

 

Anonymous photographer (United Kingdom)
Train
c. 1930
Vintage gelatin silver print
9 1/2 x 11 1/2″

 

Sasha. 'Archer Leaping Through the Air' c. 1930

 

Sasha
Archer Leaping Through the Air
c. 1930
Vintage gelatin silver print
7 3/8 x 9 3/8″

 

Leopold Hugo (American born Poland, 1866-1933) 'Craters of the Moon, Idaho' 1920

 

Leopold Hugo (American born Poland, 1866-1933)
Craters of the Moon, Idaho
1920
Tinted vintage gelatin silver print
7 3/8 x 9 3/8″

 

Anonymous. 'Acrobat Piroska at the Latin Quarter (Published in Life Magazine)' c. 1945

 

Anonymous photographer
Acrobat Piroska at the Latin Quarter (Published in ‘Life Magazine’)
c. 1945
Vintage gelatin silver print
9 5/8 x 9″

 

Felix Bonfils (French, 1831-1885) 'Woman in Burka' c. 1870

 

Felix Bonfils (French, 1831-1885)
Woman in Burka
c. 1870
vintage albumen print
8 3/4 x 6 5/8″

 

 

Modernism
724 Ellis Street
San Francisco, CA 94109

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5:30pm

Modernism website

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Review: ‘presentation/representation: photography from Germany’ at the Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 3rd July – 30th August, 2009

Curator: Thomas Weski

Artists: Laurenz Berges, Albrecht Fuchs, Karin Geiger, Claus Goedicke, Uschi Huber, Matthias Koch, Wiebke Loeper, Nicola Meitzner, Peter Piller, Heidi Specker.

An exhibition of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V. (ifa/Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations), Stuttgart, Germany and presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Australien.

 

Matthias Koch (German, b. 1967) 'Submarine Laboe near Kiel, built 1944' 2006 from the exhibition 'presentation/representation: photography from Germany' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, July - August, 2009

 

Matthias Koch (German, b. 1967)
Submarine Laboe near Kiel, built 1944
2006
© Matthias Koch

 

 

I was looking forward to this exhibition and so on a cold and very windy winter’s day I ventured out on the drive to the Monash Gallery of Art in Wheelers Hill expecting to be challenged by a new generation of German photographers. I was to be sorely disappointed. This show, with the exception of excellent work by Andreas Koch and good work by Laurenz Berges, epitomises all that I find woeful about contemporary photography.

There is a lack of life and vigour to the work, no sense of enjoyment in taking photographs of the world. The narratives are shallow and vacuous inducing a deep somnambulism in the viewer that is compounded by the silent, deeply carpeted gallery making the experience one of entering a mausoleum (this is a great space that needs to be a contemporary space!). How many times have I seen photographs of empty spaces that supposedly impart some deep inner meaning? See how a great artist like Tacita Dean achieves the same end to startling effect with her film Darmstädter Werkblock (2007). How many times do I need to see ‘dead pan’ portrait photographs that are again supposed to impart rich psychological meaning? I have seen too many already.

Conceptually the work is barren. Technically the proficiency of some of the work is almost non-existent. If this standard of work was put up for assessment in a university course it would fail miserably. For example in Nicola Meitzner’s work Forward Motion (2006), vertical portraits (of the same person in different poses) and streetscapes of Tokyo are poor quality prints mounted in unattractive silver aluminium frames. They are forgettable. If an artist were to study the work of, say, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, then one might gain some insight into how to photograph the city and the people that live in it in a way that elicits a response from the viewer to the photo-poetry that is placed before them.

Uschi Huber’s photographs of boarded up shop fronts, while a nice conceptual idea, are again lacking in technical proficiency and are nothing we haven’t seen many times before while Peter Piller’s ten print-media type pigment prints of girls at a shooting range with rifles do not bare comment on both a conceptual and technical level. Similarly, Wiebke Loeper’s colour photographs of the city of Wismar – houses, roads, water, oat fields, people peering into shop windows – sent to friends living in Melbourne to show them the desolation and rebuilding of the city are seriously year 12 work.

The two redeeming artists are Laurenz Berges and Andreas Koch.

Berges four large type C colour photographs of an empty house and the surrounds as seen through a window are intimately detailed visions of human absence from the built environment: the huts, piles of wood chips, barren trees, the feathers on the floor of one print, the cigarette butts on the floor of another, the marks on the wall in blue and red add to a sense of abandonment and alienation from the environment – traces of human experience, identity and memory etched into the photographic medium.

As the text on the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) website observes,

“Laurenz Berges is a chronicler of absence. His minimalist photographs point to the earlier use of spaces, only fragments of which are shown, whose inhabitants have put them to other, new uses. Berges depicts the traces of this change in austere images that, due to their reduction, tell their stories indirectly and almost involuntarily. These are stories about the existential significance certain spaces have for our identity, and also about their transitoriness and their loss.”1


The star of the show was the work of Matthias Koch. His five large aqua-mounted type C prints from the series Sites of German History (2006) are both technically and conceptually superb, full of delicious ironies and humour. Using an aerial aesthetic (apparently by climbing the ladder of a fire engine that he owns) Koch looks down on the landscape and through his images formulates new ways of seeing national symbols (even though many of them are not in Germany). His re-presentation of spatial inter-relations and objects embedded in their rural and urban surroundings are both simple yet layered and complex.

Unfortunately I have only two photographs (above and below) to show you of his work. None other was available but the images gives you an idea of his raison d’être. The specimen of U-995, built in Kiel in 1944, is presented as a trapped and mounted animal, preserved for our delectation and inspection with gangways and stairs to view the innards. Little hobby craft lie on a beach behind while people paddle in the shallows, a ship barely seen in the distance out at sea. The fact that this U-boat was once used to destroy such a ship, the irony of the proposition, is not lost on the viewer.

Other images in the series include a photograph of the derelict runway of the Heinkel factory as seen from above, the overgrown concrete slabs cracked and lifting, the edges filled with grass, the distant view dissolving into mist and nothingness. The photograph Harbour, Allied landing near Normandy, 1944 (2006, below) shows an American jeep and half-track of the period on the beach of the Allied landing in Normandy, tyre tracks swirling in the sand while in the distance the concrete block remains of the Mulberry harbour used in 1944 still litter the coastline. How many men, both German and American, died on this beach all those years ago? In another tour de force Atlantic Defence Wall near Cherbourg. Bunker construction built 1940 (2006) concrete bunkers dot the landscape with the beach and sea beyond as people sunbathe on the grass amongst the ruined bunkers, probably oblivious to the context of their surroundings. Koch is a master of the re-presentation of the context of memory, history and place.

Overall this exhibition is a great disappointment. I find it hard to believe that the exhibition has been curated by the same man who curated the recent Andreas Gursky exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. The choice of work and the presentation of technically poor prints is not up to standard. I also find it difficult to reconcile some of the reviews I have read of this exhibition with the actual work itself. Thank goodness for the photographs of Matthias Koch for he alone made the journey into outer Melbourne a worthwhile journey into the memory of the soul.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Anonymous. “Presentation/representation: Laurenz Berges,” on the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) website [Online] Cited 08/08/2009 no longer available online


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

     

     

    Matthias Koch (German, b. 1967) 'Harbour, Allied landing near Normandy, 1944' 2006 from the exhibition 'presentation/representation: photography from Germany' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, July - August, 2009

     

    Matthias Koch (German, b. 1967)
    Harbour, Allied landing near Normandy, 1944
    2006
    © Matthias Koch

     

    Laurenz Berges (German, b. 1966) 'Garzweiler' [surface mine] 2003 from the exhibition 'presentation/representation: photography from Germany' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, July - August, 2009

     

    Laurenz Berges (German, b. 1966)
    Garzweiler [surface mine]
    2003
    C print
    130 x 171cm (51.2 x 67.3 in.)
    © Courtesy Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt/Berlin

     

     

    This international touring exhibition was developed by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa) in Germany and is presented in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Australien.

    MGA is hosting the important international exhibition ‘presentation / representation: photography from Germany’, which brings to Melbourne the work of ten of Germany’s best contemporary photographers.

    presentation/representation is curated by Thomas Weski (curator of Andreas Gursky recently seen at the National Gallery of Victoria), and covers the work of the generation of German photographers that has followed the now-legendary Kunstakademie Düsseldorf generation of Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Candida Höfer. For the artists in presentation/representation, including Matthias Koch, Laurenz Berges and Heidi Specker, photography is a medium that has its own language and characteristics, and their work collectively explores the limits of the medium.

    Shaune Lakin, Director of the MGA states “MGA is thrilled to present ‘presentation / representation’ and to bring to the people of Melbourne such an important survey of contemporary German photography. As well as providing a comprehensive survey of German practice, the exhibition will complement the experience of those who saw Weski’s wonderful Gursky exhibition at NGV. We are also delighted to host participating artist Matthias Koch.”

    Koch will be presenting a series of public programs including an artist talk, student tutorial and a field trip exploring the industrial suburban sites close to the gallery. “With his critical interest in landscape, architecture and history, Koch will provide some wonderful insights into our local landscape for participants in these programs,” notes Dr Lakin.

    MGA’s Education and public programs coordinator Stephanie Richter says: “This is a great opportunity for students and Melbourne audiences to meet one of Germany’s most celebrated contemporary photographers and to participate in the busy schedule of talks, tutorials and field trips with Matthias.”

    Press release from Monash Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 05/08/2019 no longer available online

     

    Heidi Specker (German, b. 1962) 'D'Elsi - Elsi' 12007

     

    Heidi Specker (German, b. 1962)
    D’Elsi – Elsi 1
    2007
    Digital Fine Art Print
    Courtesy Fiedler Contemporary, Köln
    Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin
    © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany, 2007

     

    Claus Goedicke (German, b. 1966) 'Trip to the Moon' 2006

     

    Claus Goedicke (German, b. 1966)
    Trip to the Moon
    2006
    Pigment print on wallpaper
    © Claus Goedicke

     

    Nicola Meitzner (German, b. 1969) 'Forward motion' 2006

     

    Nicola Meitzner (German, b. 1969)
    Forward motion
    2006
    From the tableau Forward motion
    Pigment print
    © Nicola Meitzner

     

    Wiebke Loeper (German, b. 1972) 'To the sisters of Carl Möglin' 2005

     

    Wiebke Loeper (German, b. 1972)
    To the sisters of Carl Möglin
    2005
    From the series To the sisters of Carl Möglin
    © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany, 2007

     

    Uschi Huber (German, b. 1966) 'Fronten' 2006

     

    Uschi Huber (German, b. 1966)
    Fronten
    2006
    From the series Fronten 2006
    © Uschi Huber

     

    Albrecht Fuchs (German, b. 1964) 'Daniel Richter, Berlin' 2004

     

    Albrecht Fuchs (German, b. 1964)
    Daniel Richter, Berlin
    2004
    C print
    © Courtesy Frehking Wiesehöfer, Köln

     

     

    Monash Gallery of Art
    860 Ferntree Gully Road
    Wheelers Hill, Victoria 3150

    Opening hours:
    Tuesday – Friday: 10am – 5pm
    Saturday – Sunday: 10pm – 4pm
    Monday and Public Holidays: closed

    Monash Gallery of Art website

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    Book: ‘Negatives Are To Be Stored’ photographs by Stefania Gurdowa 2008

    2009

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

     

    The presence of these photographs marks your consciousness indelibly, for the artist has made marks that cannot easily be removed.

    Dr Marcus Bunyan

     

    All images by Stefania Gurdowa from the series Negatives Are To Be Stored.
    All images © Imago Mundi

    Klisze przechowuje sie (Negatives are to be stored)
    Photographs by Stefania Gurdowa
    Text by Jerzy Lewczynski and Dariusz Czaja
    Hardcover: 218 pages
    22 x 28.5cm

    Publisher: Fundacja Imago Mundi / Muzeum Etnograficzne w Krakowie.
    ISBN 978-83-925914-4-3

     

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

     

    Eleven years ago, in the attic of a tenement house in the town of Debica, more than 1,000 damaged glass negative plates were discovered. Most of them depicted expressive portraits of anonymous individuals who lived in the neighbourhood during the 20s and 30s.

    At first sight, we could guess hardly anything about the author of the plates, although her name appeared on them. But our deepening research shed light upon someone extraordinary for her time: an independent, gifted woman of consequence whose workshops existed far away from the grand cultural capitals, and whose art lay in taking orderly portraits of her neighbours: shopkeepers, craftsmen, peasants, priests and Jews.

    Stefania Gurdowa (née Czerny) was born in Bochnia in 1888. Her father was the bandmaster of a salt-mine orchestra. She herself played the zither. She gained her photographic education in Bochnia, and then in Lwow (Lemberg). From 1921 to 1937 she ran her own photographic workshop in Debica (and established branches in Mielec and Ropczyce for a time). It was unusual for a woman to run a business like hers in this era, yet it appears Gurdowa also hired a number of employees – Feliks Adam Czelny among them, a man who found fame after 1945, when he published a documentary report on the ruined city of Wroclaw.

    Stefania and Kazimierz Gurda divorced, and from her home in Debica, the photographer took only her daughter, Zosia – and the piano. In the late 30s she settled in Silesia. Under Nazi occupation her business was taken over by the Germans, and she found herself a paid worker in her own workshop.

    After the end of the war, Zosia migrated to France. Stefania Gurdowa decided to stay in Poland, and once more she started all over again – this time in Lodygowice, near Zywiec. She took care of her granddaughter, Basia for some years, until the girl was reunited with her mother in France. And she established yet another photographic workshop. Her former clients remember that there were always fresh flowers in her chilly rented flat-and-atelier – as well as a permanent Christmas tree!

    Gurdowa, the distinguished artist, died in 1968. Her apartment was cleaned after she passed away, and her immense photographic archive was disposed of and lost. Only a fragment of her art endures, together with a question without an answer: who hid a collection of glass plates behind a wall in the attic of her workshop in Debica? Perhaps it was her own decision to preserve them this way. As a responsible professional, she must have been aware of the rule that “negatives are to be stored.”

    Agnieszka Sabor

    Text from the Lens Culture website [Online] Cited 22/03/2019

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968) 'Untitled' Nd from the series 'Negatives Are To Be Stored'

     

    Stefania Gurdowa (Polish, 1888-1968)
    Untitled (anonymous individuals)
    Nd
    From the series Negatives Are To Be Stored
    Glass plate negative

     

     

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    Review: ‘John Brack’ retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne

    Exhibition dates: 24th April – 9th August, 2009

     

    John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The chase' 1959 from the 'John Brack' retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne, April - August, 2009

     

    John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
    The chase
    1959
    Oil on composition board
    100.2 x 121.8 cm
    Grishin, o94
    Private collection, Melbourne
    © Helen Brack

     

     

    “One either has a subject, or one has not.”

    John Brack

     

    This is a solid retrospective of the work of the Australian artist John Brack (1920-1999) presented by the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. John Brack is, quintessentially, an Australian and more specifically a Melbourne artist. Melbournians have a love hate relationship with his work – loving the earlier paintings that view the working classes of 1950s Melbourne through a nostalgic, humorous, sardonic lens (when originally the popularity of the work in the 1950s/60s was, as Robert Nelson has observed, mistakenly identified with ridicule of the subject matter)1 while finding the later work of massed pencils, postcards, deities and wooden people mystifying, cold and elusive.

    Brack saw his paintings of suburbia as honest portrayals of the new milieux. His sparse, graphic style evidenced the emotionally distanced relationships between space and people in the new cityscapes and best suited his cerebral approach to the subject matter. Men become mannequins with skeletal faces that hover menacingly behind the barmaid in The bar (1954, above), an amorphous mass of brown-suited humanity. Two women are portrayed in all their high-collared stiffness in the painting ‘Two typists’ (1955, above), their stylised faces, black hat and hair surmounted by hanging, disembodied legs at the top of the painting. These two women then reappear at bottom right in one of Brack’s most famous paintings, Collins St, 5p.m. (1955, above) subsumed into the two lines of people wearily trudging home from a day’s work at the office.

    Brack’s early paintings are full of stylised metaphor – for example the clinical emptiness of space, the implied threat of hanging ‘instruments’ in ‘The block’ (1954, above) or the decapitated bird-like alienation of the fish head in The fish shop (1955, above) – offer comment on the nature of suburban life: ordered, dead, soulless surfaces, facades behind which life seethes. Brack recognises the slightly macabre beauty of these industrial spaces, their form and purpose, where no one had recognised them before. There are oversized teeth (The veil, 1952), large hands, the fleshy pink of faces (The barbers shop, 1952) and the tribal mask of a face in Man in pub (1953) where man becomes fragment. Above all there is a simplicity and eloquence in line and form grounded in a limited palette of ochres, yellows, greys, blacks, whites and browns. These are the colours of the early cave painters and it’s poignant that Brack uses them so effectively to anchor his subject matter both in history, memory and the present of contemporary life, a life we still recognise intimately over fifty years later.

    Here is the ‘Human Condition’ writ large (with capitals!), the humility of professions such as butchers, seamstresses, typists and barmaids (with their limited control of the environment) portraying the body of the worker, as in Satre’s ‘Nothingness’,2 living the tedium of suburban life whilst wanting to flee the anguish of this existence into the desirable light of the future toward which man projects himself. This a theme that Brack develops in the later paintings with their stilted, cerebral investigation of existentialism. These paintings offer a more general contribution to a view of the human condition – love and hate, we, us, them, pros and cons – a view originally grounded in the suburbs of Melbourne but elevated to the ethereal, paintings that seem to lack material substance but offer a hyper-refined conceptual aesthetic.

    Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones But Pencils Will Never Hurt Me

    As early as Knives and forks (1958) and The playground (1959) we can observe the beginnings of the spaces of his later pencil paintings with their uniting of form, line and plane (think the planes of Cezanne). The later work is literally much colder, the palette now blues instead of the warmer ochres and yellows and this change is very obvious when you walk around the exhibition. There is an emotional distance here – from human contact and the warmth of company. Ronald Miller observed in 1970 that Brack’s work is about the rituals of life, about states of uneasy poise and vulnerability, about realities behind facades but in the later work the paintings become the facades: gone are the ambiguities and vulnerabilities to be replaced by an altogether different ‘order’ of existence.

    We see in paintings such as Souvenirs (1976), We, Us, Them (1983), The pros and cons (1985) and Watching the flowers (1990-91 – see all below) how the canvas has become a stage set replete with turned up edges, spaces of ritual performance containing generalised metaphors for the nature of human existence, metaphors with universal themes. In his investigation of the universal Brack looses sight of the personal. His towers made of playing cards, his thrusting planes, the military precision of his opposing armies of goose-steeping pencils lack empathy for the thing that he was searching to be attuned with: the nature of existence, the human condition.

    As Sartre observed,

    “To apprehend myself as seen is, in fact, to apprehend myself as seen in the world and from the standpoint of the world. The look does not carve me out in the universe; it comes to search for me at the heart of my situation and grasps me only in irresolvable relations with instruments. If I am seen as seated, I must be seen as “seated-on-a-chair,” … But suddenly the alienation of myself, which is the act of being-looked-at, involves the alienation of the world which I organise. I am seated on this chair with the result that I do not see it at all, that it is impossible for me to see it …”3


    This is the point that John Brack reached: through his desire to paint universal themes he was unable to visualise and apprehend himself as seen in the world from the standpoint of the world. It feels (yes feeling!) that he was alienated from the very thing he sought to portray – how the personal and the universal are one and the same.

    Brack’s ‘failure’ as an artist (if indeed it can be called that) is not, as Robert Nelson has suggested, “because he didn’t talk enough or wisely enough to negotiate his way out of a misunderstanding” (that his work was sardonic). On the contrary I believe his ‘success’ as an artist is that he painted exactly what he wanted to paint in the time and place that he wanted to paint it. His later work might strike some as cold and impenetrable but if one looks clearly, with a steady eye, there still beats a heart under that chill exterior, a heart grounded in the life of suburban Melbourne. In the end Brack returns to the beginning, still exploring, still searching.

    As T.S. Eliot wrote in one of The Four Quartets,4

    “We shall not cease from exploration
    And the end of all our exploring
    Will be to arrive where we started
    And know the place for the first time.”

     Dr Marcus Bunyan


    Many thankx to the NGV for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

     

    1/ Nelson, Robert. The Age newspaper. Melbourne, Friday 24th April, 2009

    2/ “We learn that Nothingness is revealed to us most fully in anguish and that man generally tries to flee this anguish, this Nothingness which he is, by means of “bad faith.” The study of “bad faith” reveals to us that whereas Being-in-itself simply is, man is the being “who is what he is not and who is not what he is.” In other words man continually makes himself. Instead of being, he “has to be”; his present being has meaning only in the light of the future toward which he projects himself. Thus he is not what at any instant we might want to say he is, and he is that towards which he projects himself but which he is not yet.”
    Barnes, Hazel. Introduction to Jean-Paul Satre’s Being and Nothingness. London: Methuen, 1966, pp. xvii-xix

    3/ Satre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness. (trans. Hazel Barnes). London: Methuen, 1966, p. 263

    4/ Eliot, T.S. “Little Gidding” from The Four Quartets (1942)

       

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The barber’s shop' 1952 from the 'John Brack' retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne, April - August, 2009

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The barber’s shop
      1952
      Oil on canvas
      63.7 × 76.3 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Purchased, 1953
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Two Typists' 1955 from the 'John Brack' retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, NGV Australia, Federation Square, Melbourne, April - August, 2009

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Two typists
      1955
      Oil on canvas
      51.0 × 61.5 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      The Joseph Brown Collection. Presented through the NGV Foundation by Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 2004
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Collins St, 5p.m.' 1955

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Collins St, 5 p.m.
      1955
      Oil on canvas
      114.8 × 162.8 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Purchased, 1956
      © National Gallery of Victoria

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The bar' 1954

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The bar
      1954
      Oil on canvas
      97.0 × 130.3 cm irreg.
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Purchased with the assistance of Peter Clemenger AM and Joan Clemenger, Elena Keown Bequest, Spotlight Foundation, NGV Foundation, Ross Adler AC and Fiona Adler, Bruce Parncutt and Robin Campbell, Marc Besen AO and Eva Besen AO, the Bowness Family, Lindsay Fox AO and Paula Fox, Dorothy Gibson, Rino Grollo and Diana Ruzzene Grollo, Ian Hicks AM, the NGV Women’s Association and donors to the John Brack Appeal, 2009
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The conference' 1956

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The conference
      1956
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The block' 1954

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The block
      1954
      Oil on canvas
      59.0 × 71.5 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Presented through The Art Foundation of Victoria by Dr Joseph Brown, AO, OBE, Honorary Life Benefactor, 1999
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The fish shop' 1955

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The fish shop
      1955
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The new house' 1953

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The new house
      1953
      Oil on canvas on board
      127.0 x 55.8 cm
      Private collection, Brisbane
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Self-portrait' 1955

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Self-portrait
      1955
      Oil on canvas
      81.4 × 48.3 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Purchased with the assistance of the National Gallery Women’s Association, 2000
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The unmade road' 1954

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The unmade road
      1954
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Subdivision' 1954

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Subdivision
      1954
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Nude in an armchair' 1957

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Nude in an armchair
      1957
      Oil on canvas
      127.6 × 107.4 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Purchased, 1957
      © National Gallery of Victoria

       

       

      “What I paint most is what interests me most, that is, people; the Human Condition, in particular the effect on appearance of environment and behaviour… A large part of the motive is the desire to understand, and if possible, to illuminate …”

      John Reed, New Painting 1952-62, Longmans, Melbourne, 1963, p. 19.

       

      Opening 24 April, the National Gallery of Victoria will present a major retrospective of the work of John Brack, the first in more than twenty years. This exhibition will survey John Brack’s complete career, incorporating over 150 works from all of his major series. John Brack will bring together a significant body of the artist’s paintings and works on paper, including pictures that have developed ‘icon status’ and others that have rarely, if ever, been seen publicly since they were first exhibited.

      Kirsty Grant, Senior Curator Australian Art, NGV said that more than any other artist of his generation, John Brack was a painter of modern Australian life.

      “John Brack painted images which explored the social rituals and realities of everyday life. Long considered the quintessential Melbourne artist, Brack’s images of urban and suburban Melbourne painted during the 1950s drew attention for their novelty of subject and instantly recognisable references. His work is much broader however and in this exhibition we will see the continuity throughout his career of his fundamental interest in people, human nature and the human condition,” said Ms Grant.

      Frances Lindsay, NGV Deputy Director said John Brack was widely considered one of Australia’s greatest twentieth century artists.

      “The NGV has enjoyed a long association with John Brack: he worked as an assistant frame maker at the gallery in 1949, became head of the National Gallery School in 1962, and the NGV was also the first public institution to purchase one of his works. Brack’s iconic works are certainly the highlight for many visitors to the Gallery. We are thrilled to be continuing this special relationship by presenting this important and timely retrospective.”

      The exhibition will be displayed chronologically, beginning with some rare early student works. Each phase of Brack’s practice will be explored, from his well-known urban scenes of the 1950s to the highly symbolic paintings from the 1970s. Many of Brack’s most familiar paintings are included in the exhibition such as Collins St, 5p.m, The bar and The Old Time.

      Brack produced compelling pictures which captured the essential characteristics of his subjects involved in everyday activities and, in some of his most engaging series, he depicted the characters of the racecourse, children at school and professional ballroom dancers. Throughout his career Brack also painted the nude, still life subjects and portraits, both of family and friends – including artists Fred Williams and John Perceval – as well as commissioned subjects, such as Barry Humphries as his alter-ego Edna Everage. During the 1970s Brack replaced the human figure with an assortment of everyday implements including cutlery, pens and pencils which he used as metaphors for the complexities of human behaviour and relationships.

      Press release from the NGV website [Online] Cited 26/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Inside and outside (The shop window)' 1972

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Inside and outside (The shop window)
      1972
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Latin American Grand Final' 1969

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Latin American Grand Final
      1969
      Oil on canvas
      167.5 x 205.0 cm
      National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
      Purchased, 1981
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Portrait of Fred Williams' 1979-1980

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Portrait of Fred Williams
      1979-1980
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'The pros and cons' 1985

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The pros and cons
      1985
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)' The Battle' 19181-1983

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      The Battle
      19181-1983
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'We, Us, Them' 1983

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      We, Us, Them
      1983
      Oil on canvas
      183.4 × 122.4 cm
      National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
      Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Mr Philip Russell, Fellow, 1983
      © Helen Brack

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Kings and Queens' 1988

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Kings and Queens
      1988
      Oil on canvas

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Souvenirs' 1976

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Souvenirs
      1976

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999) 'Watching the flowers' 1990-1991

       

      John Brack (Australian, 1920-1999)
      Watching the flowers
      1990-1991
      Oil on canvas

       

       

      The Ian Potter Centre:
 NGV Australia 
Federation Square
      Corner of Russell and 
Flinders Streets, Melbourne

      Opening hours:
      Everyday 10am – 5pm

      National Gallery of Victoria website

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      Exhibition: ‘Beuys is Here; Sculpture Object Action Revolution’ at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, England

      Exhibition dates: 4th July – 27th September, 2009

       

      All photographs are of work in the exhibition. Many thankx to the De La Warr Pavilion for allowing me to publish the photographs and art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

      Dr Marcus Bunyan

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Untitled (Sun State)' 1974 from the exhibition 'Beuys is Here; Sculpture Object Action Revolution' at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, England, July - Sept, 2009

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Untitled (Sun State)
      1974
      Chalk and felt-tip pen on blackboard with wood frame
      47 1/2 x 71 1/8″ (120.7 x 180.7cm)

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'I like America and America likes me' action 1974 from the exhibition 'Beuys is Here; Sculpture Object Action Revolution' at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, England, July - Sept, 2009

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      I like America and America likes me action
      1974

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) Überwindet endlich die Parteiendiktatur - Poster, N070815SE_118_098 - Overcome Party Dictatorship Now 1971

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Überwindet endlich die Parteiendiktatur – Poster, N070815SE_118_098 – Overcome Party Dictatorship Now
      1971
      Print on paper
      278 x 395 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

       

      German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) is widely recognised as one of the most influential and extraordinary artists of the twentieth century.
 Artist, educator, political and social activist, Beuys’s philosophy  proposed the healing power and social function of art, in which everyone can participate and benefit. The works in this exhibition provide an opportunity to experience this expanded concept of art as he understood it. Collectively, the exhibition presents the ‘constellation of ideas’ central to Beuys’s practice, revealing his ideas on zoology, ecology, homeopathy, economics, politics, social activism, teaching and learning. Beuys incorporated into his work various materials such as felt, fat and metal, selected because of their inherent properties such as insulation, conduction and protection which all have associations with Beuys’s ideas.

      The exhibition is largely selected from the ARTIST ROOMS collection and brings together well-known sculptures, drawings, vitrines and a remarkable selection of posters recalling live actions and events. Works include Fat Chair (1964-1985) and, in Gallery 2, a single major work Scala Napoletana (1985) is shown for the first time in the UK. In addition nearly twenty notable multiples are included within the exhibition selected from National Galleries of Scotland. The multiple was a form of communication for Beuys – a means by which he could share and distribute his ideas beyond the confines of the artworld.

      Text from the De La Warr Pavilion website [Online] Cited 23/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      Joseph Beuys. 'Fettstuhl (Fat Chair)' 1964-1985

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Fettstuhl (Fat Chair)
      1964-1985
      Wood, glass, metal, fabric, paint, fat and thermometer
      1830 x 1550 x 640 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Entwurf für ein Filzenvironment [Model for a Felt Environment]' 1964

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Entwurf für ein Filzenvironment (Model for a Felt Environment)
      1964
      Wood, glass, felt, oil paint and lead
      1840 x 1680 x 840 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      The neat rolls of grey felt on painted wood inside this vitrine are intended as a model for an ‘environment’. Felt insulates and absorbs, representing protection but also a sense of constriction, like being suffocated. The same type of felt rolls are seen in the ‘environment’ Plight (1958/1985), now in the Pompidou Centre, in which the walls and ceiling are covered with felt to create a stifling atmosphere. Beuys used felt in an infamous ‘action’ performed the same year this model was made. The Chief saw the artist being wrapped in a felt blanket, fighting claustrophobia to lie practically still, as if in a coffin, for a nine-hour period.

       

      Joseph Beuys. 'Fettecke (Prozess) [Fat Corner (Process)]' 1968

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Fettecke (Prozess) (Fat Corner (Process))
      1968
      Wood, glass, 2 cardboard boxes and fat
      1835 x 1680 x 840 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Looking inside the two boxes in this vitrine, we can see that in one, the fat has been neatly shaped into the corner to make a wedge. In the other, the shape of the fat has a disturbing biological look to it, like inner organs which have been unceremoniously dumped in a heap. Beuys used triangles of fat in both his sculptures and ‘actions’. From around 1963, he would use wedges of fat or felt to mark the boundaries of a space when performing an ‘action’.

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Langhaus (Vitrine)' 1953-1962

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Langhaus (Vitrine)
      1953-1962
      Wood, glass, felt, oil paint and paper
      1830 x 1545 x 640 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Langhaus can be variously translated as ‘nave’ such as one finds in a church, or ‘longhouse’, such as the dwelling house for one or several families found in early north European regions or, still today, in tribal communities in the Amazon region or the South Seas. The block of wood has a small piece of felt attached to the top, suggesting, according to Beuys’s usual iconography, the idea of protection, a connotation strengthened by the length of felt also lying in the vitrine. The walking stick lying alongside the felt is a traditional Beuysian symbol for leadership and protection, much as a shepherd looks after his flock.

       

       

      Beuys is recognised as one of the most influential artists of the late twentieth century. Adopting the roles of political and social activist and educator, his philosophy proposed the healing power and social function of art for all.

      From the 1950s onwards, many of his works are made from a distinctive group of materials, in particular felt, fat and copper. These were chosen for their insulating, conductive, protective, transmitting and transforming properties. Animals of all kinds appear in his work, but he was particularly drawn to stags, bees and hares. A childhood interest in the natural sciences remained with him throughout his life, fuelling a desire to explore themes and experiment with the properties of materials.

      Beuys produced a vast body of work that includes performance, drawing, print-making, sculpture and installation. His complex, interlocking themes cover science, myth, history, medicine and energy. Beuys’ own image and life story is inextricably linked to his work through his persona of the Shaman, shepherd or stag-leader.

      This group of works covers forty years of Beuys’s career. Included are nature-based drawings of the 1950s, images and scores recording 1960s ‘actions’ and later installations, in addition to sculptures and vitrines. The collection brings together drawings with sculpture from the 1960s like the iconic Fat Chair, and images relating to Actions and installations like Coyote and Show Your Wound. It culminates with the sculpture Scala Napoletana which was made only a few months before the artist’s death, and relates to the theme of communication with the beyond.”

      Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website [Online] Cited 23/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      Joseph Beuys with 'Rose for Direct Democracy' 1973

       

      Joseph Beuys with Rose for Direct Democracy
      1973

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Pregnant Woman with Swan' 1959

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Schwangere und Schwan (Pregnant Woman with Swan)
      1959
      Oil paint and watercolour on paper
      276 x 214 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      The tiny swan in this painting looks as if it is swimming serenely inside the woman, replacing the foetus inside her pregnant body. The drawing combines male and female elements, with the phallic nature of the swan’s neck. Beuys had been fascinated with swans since childhood. A sculpture of a large golden swan sat on top of the tower of Schwanenburg castle (Swan Castle) in his home town of Cleves, and was visible from his bedroom window while he was growing up. With his interest in language, the artist would also have delighted in the similarity between the German words for pregnant woman (Schwangere) and swan (Schwan).

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Felt Suit' 1970

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Felt Suit
      1970
      Felt and wood
      1660 x 660 x 260 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Beuys began producing works in multiples in the 1960s, partly as a way to combat the elitism of the art world. This is probably his most famous multiple. It has its origins in the performance Action the Dead Mouse/Isolation Unit of 1970, where Beuys wore a felt suit with lengthened arms and legs, like the one seen here. He described the suit as an extension of the sculptures he made with felt, where the material’s insulating properties were integral to the meaning of the work. Beuys intended this concept of warmth to extend beyond the material to encompass what he described as ‘spiritual warmth or the beginning of an evolution’.

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Stark beleuchteter Hirschstuhl (Brightly-Lit Stag Chair)' 1957-1971

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Stark beleuchteter Hirschstuhl (Brightly-Lit Stag Chair)
      1957-1971
      2 works on paper, oil paint, graphite and masking tape
      1390 x 963 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Although Beuys began this collage in 1957, it was not finished until 1971. The chair is similar to the subject of the artist’s 1972 sculpture Backrest for a fine-limbed person (Hare-type) of the 20th Century A.D. This is a cast iron impression of a child’s plaster corset, made as a multiple. However, the striding feet of the chair in this collage give it a human aspect, making it seem almost confident and self-possessed. The curved back of the chair is echoed in the lightbulb shape at the top of the image. The stag, in Beuys’s bestiary, guided the soul in its journey to the afterlife.

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Passage der Zukunftplanetoiden' (Hearts of the Revolutionaries: Passage of the Planets of the Future) 1955

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Passage der Zukunftplanetoiden (Hearts of the Revolutionaries: Passage of the Planets of the Future)
      1955
      Watercolour on card
      295 x 490 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      The choice of red for this painting would seem like an obvious one, reflecting both the heart and the virtues of honour and courage of the revolutionary in the title of the piece. Red also represents socialism, a belief of Beuys which became central to his later work. However, the colour red is used sparingly and symbolically in the artist’s work, and here it makes a bold statement on life, vitality and the future. The inclusion of the round shape to represent a planet brings an astronomical element into the work.

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Scala Napoletana' 1985

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Scala Napoletana
      1985
      Overall dimensions variable: 11000 x 10000 x 6000mm (room size at Bexhill)
      Ladder: 4510 x 250 x 80mm, Lead spheres: 500mm diameter each
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Much of the work Beuys made in his last few years includes objects or themes which suggest death. This sculpture was originally inspired by a ladder the artist found while recovering from illness on the island of Capri in Autumn 1985, which he hung with two stones. When he visited Amalfi at Christmas in the same year, he purchased a ladder (Scala Libera) from a landlord which he used to make this sculpture. Held in suspension, it appears as if the pair of lead weights are preventing this heavy wooden ladder from soaring into the air. This is one of the last sculptures Beuys made. He died in January 1986.

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Sled' 1969

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Sled
      1969

       

      The materials used in the making of this work relate to Beuys’s experience of being rescued by nomadic Tartars when his plane was shot down during the Second World War. Fat was rubbed into his body and he was wrapped in felt to keep him warm. The sled looks as if it has been prepared for an expedition or in response to an emergency, with a survival kit strapped to it. The flashlight represents the sense of orientation, the felt is protective, and the fat is for food.

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986) 'Ohne Titel (Untitled)' 1970

       

      Joseph Beuys (German, 1921-1986)
      Ohne Titel (Untitled)
      1970
      Gelatin silver print on canvas
      2330 x 2275 mm
      ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland
      Galleries of Scotland through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

       

      Wearing his unmistakeable felt trilby hat, with his fishing vest poking through a luxuriant fur-lined jacket, this large image (over two metres square) shows Beuys at his most iconic. The clothes he wears here were part of his artist’s ‘uniform’, chosen for comfort and practicality (the multi-pocketed vest was particularly useful) but also as a way to create his image. Fittingly, he is depicted with one of his most distinctive sculptures. In the foreground is The Pack (1969), a group of twenty-four sledges. Each one has its own survival kit including fat for sustenance, felt for warmth and a torch for navigation, making the artist’s signature materials part of this image too.

      Text under images from the National Galleries of Scotland website [Online] Cited 23/07/2009. No longer available online

       

       

      De La Warr Pavilion
      Bexhill-on-Sea,
      East Sussex, TN40 1DP

      Opening hours:
      10am – 5pm, seven days a week

      De La Warr Pavilion website

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      Review: ‘Tacita Dean’ at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne

      Exhibition dates: 6th June – 2nd August 2009

       

      Photographs from the exhibition are in the chronological order that they appear.

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Grobsteingrab (floating)' 2009

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Grobsteingrab (floating)
      2009

       

       

      “The subjects are connected to the medium I use. It’s all about light and time and phenomena to some extent, like a rainbow or a gust of wind or even an eclipse or a green ray, things like that. And this is the language of light. It’s not the language of binary pixels.”


      Tacita Dean1

       

      “The value of her [Dean’s] work, writes Winterson, is one of the virtues of art itself: it is an intervention into the rush of everyday life, holding up time and space for contemplation.”


      Jeanette Winterson2

       

       

      This is a dense, ‘thick’ exhibition by Tacita Dean at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne that rewards repeat viewing. The theatricality of each work and the theatricality of the journey through ACCA’s dimmed galleries (an excellent installation of the work!) makes for an engrossing exhibition as Dean explores the minutiae of memory and the significance of insignificant events: a contemplation on the space, time and materiality of the everyday.

      The exhibition starts with 3 very large floating rocks (Grobsteingrab (floating), Hunengrab (floating) and Riesenbelt (floating) all 2009) printed on multiple pieces of photographic paper, the surrounds of the rocks painted out with matt black blackboard paint (see image at top of this posting). The rocks look like mountain massif and are printed at different levels to each other; they move up and down, earthed in the sense that the viewer feels their heavy weight but also buoyant in their surface shininess, seeming to float into the void. The textuality of the rocks is incredible, the suspension of the rocks fragmented by the fact that they are printed on multiple pieces of photographic paper, the edges of the paper curling up to dislocate the unity of form.

      Opposite is the large multi-panelled T + I (Tristan + Isolde), a tour de force of Romantic landscape meets mythological journey (see image second from top). Sunshine searing through cloud lights the 25 Turner-esque black and white gravure panels that feature an inlet, fjord and ravine. Semi-legible words dot the landscape, reflecting on the legendary story: ‘undergrowth’, ‘dispute’, ‘brightening up’, ‘BLIND FOLLY’ and ‘the union involved in a manifestation(?)’ for example. Each panel is beautifully rendered and a joy to behold – my friend and I stood transfixed, examining each panel in minute detail, trying to work out the significance and relation between the writing and image. As with most of the work in the exhibition the piece engages the viewer in a dialogue between reality, story and memory, between light, space, time and phenomena.

      After the small rear projected film Totality (2000) that shows the extraordinary event of a total eclipse of the sun by the moon for a period of two minutes and six seconds the viewer takes a short darkened passage to experience the major installation in the exhibition Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’ (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films) 2007 (see images below).

      The first thing you see is one image projected onto a small suspended screen, the rest of the installation blocked by a short gallery wall to the right. The dancer Merce Cunningham sits in studious calm and observes us. This in itself is magical but as we round the corner other screens of different sizes and heights come into view, all portraying Cunningham’s dance studio and him sitting in it from different angles, heights and distances (including close-ups of Cunningham himself). In the six screen projection the performances of Cunningham are sometimes in synch, sometimes not. The director Trevor Carlson, holding a stop watch, times the 3 movements of Cage’s musical piece 4’33” and directs Cunningham to change position at the end of every movement; his hands move, he crosses his legs and the performance continues.

      The work is projected into the sculptural space using old 16mm film projectors and their sound mixes with the studied silence of the Cage work and white noise. The mirrors in the studio make spaces of infinite recess, showing us the director with the stop watch, the windows, the floor, the markings of the dancers hands on the mirrors surface adding another echo of past presences. As a viewer their seems to be an ‘openness’ around as you are pulled into a spatial and sound vortex, a phenomena that transcends normal spatio-temporal dimensionality. As people pass through the installation their shadows fall on the screens and become part of the work adding to the multi-layered feeling of the work. This is sensational stuff – you feel that you transcend reality itself as you observe and become immersed within this amazing work – almost as though space and time had split apart at the seams and you are left hanging, suspended in mid-air.

      The next two films are my favourite pieces in the exhibition. Darmstädter Werkblock (2007) shows us the significance of insignificant markings – edges and intersections, textures, blends and bleeds, the minutiae of existence in the markings on the fabric of an internal wall (see photograph below). Here is light, wood panelling, texture and again the sound of the whirring of the film projector. Usually I am not a fan of this kind of work having seen enough ‘Dead Pan’ photography and photography of empty yet supposedly important spaces in my life, but here Dean’s film makes the experience come alive and actually mean something. Her work transcends the subject matter – and matter is at the point where these interstitial spaces have been marked by the abstract signs of human existence that constantly surround us.

      In Michael Hamburger (2007) Dean reaches the empito-me of these personal narratives that inhabit everyday life. Film of an orchard with wind rustling through the trees, clouds drifting across the sky, rotting apples on the branches, fallen fruit on the ground and a clearing with a man looking up at the trees is accompanied by the industrial sounds of clicks and pops like that of an old radio (see photograph above). The swirling sound of the wind surrounds you in the darkened gallery space much as the panoramic screen of the projection seems to enfold you. The scene swaps to an interior of a house and shows the man, has face mainly in shadow, the film focusing on the different type of apples in front of him or on the aged wrinkles of his hands holding the apples. He talks intelligently and knowingly about the different types of apples and their rarity and qualities. This is Michael Hamburger (now dead which adds poignancy to the film) – poet, critic, memoirist and academic notable for his translations of the work of W. G. Sebald, one of Tacita Dean’s main influences (and also an author that I love dearly).

      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. As John Matthews of ArtKritique has so insightfully observed in his review of this work Dean implicitly understands how objects can be elegies for fleeting lives.

      After this work one should have a break – go to the front of the gallery and have a coffee and relax because this is an exhausting show!


      The rest of the exhibition tends to tail off slightly, with less engaging but still interesting works.

      In Die Regimentstochter (2005) (the name of a Donizetti opera) Dean uses a pile of 36 found and mutilated old opera and theatre programs from the 1930s and 1940s such as Staats Theatre, Berlin, Der Tanz and Deutsche Openhaus. These programs have had portions of their front covers roughly but clinically cut to reveal the inner pages beneath (see image below) and Dean uses them to comment on the politicisation of culture in Berlin’s mid-20th century history. The top of a powdered wigged head or the face of Beethoven has been revealed when the title of the work has been neatly removed along with something else:

      “Each programme gives a tantalising glimpse of a title or a face through a small window cut into the embossed cover; we recognise Beethoven, Rossini, the face of a singer perhaps. When and by whom this incision in the cover was made, very neatly one might add, even more why these disfigured programmes were kept remains a mystery. A swift search in an archive would easily show what has been removed; most likely an embossed swastika, for these performances all happened during the Third Reich. Why they were removed is left to our imaginations; perhaps an avid theatre-goer livid at the co-option of culture by the regime, perhaps someone afraid they might be misinterpreted as fascist memorabilia, while wishing to retain the memories these performances triggered.”3

      High up on a wall opposite these programs is the film Palast (2004) in which Dean reflects Berlin’s divided history in the jaded façade of the once iconic Palast, the government building of the former German Democratic Republic.4 Shards of light hit glass and reflections are fractured in their gridded panes (see images below). A bird is seen flying, viewed through the window and we see the stains on that window but in this film things feel a bit forced. Unlike the earlier Darmstädter Werkblock there is little magic here.

      Again the minutiae of existence is examined in the final two films Noir et Blanc (2006), made on the last 5 rolls of Dean’s black and white double-sided 16mm film stock and Kodak (2006), both made at the Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saône before it closed it’s film production facilities (see images below). With the demise of the medium that she feels closest to Dean sought permission to film at the factory itself and both films examine that medium by turning it on itself.

      “Dean became acutely aware of the threat to her chosen medium when she was unable to obtain standard 16mm black-and-white film for her camera. Upon discovering that the Kodak factory in Chalon-sur-Saône, France, was closing its film production facility, Dean obtained permission to document the manufacture of film at the factory, where cameras have never before been invited. The resulting rear-screen projection ‘Noir et Blanc’, filmed on the final five rolls Dean acquired, turns the medium on itself. The 44-minute-long work ‘Kodak’ constitutes a contemplative elegy for the approaching demise of a medium specific to Dean’s own practice. Kodak’s narrative follows the making of celluloid as it runs through several miles of machinery and explores the abandoned corners of the factory. On the day of filming, the factory also ran a test through the system with brown paper, providing a rare opportunity to see the facilities fully illuminated, without the darkness needed to prevent exposure, and underscoring the luster of the celluloid as the dull brown strips contrast with the luminous, transparent polyester.”5

      As writer Tony Lloyd has commented, “The film “Kodak” documenting the manufacturing of film was as solemn and reverent as a Catholic mass and equally as dull and inexplicable.”6 I wouldn’t go that far but by the end of the exhibition the nostalgia for old technologies, the brown paper programs and the film strip as relic were starting to wear a bit thin, like the sprockets of an old film camera failing to take up the film.


      At her best 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 (thank you Tony Lloyd for that word, so appropriate I had to use it!) 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 is an intense and moving experience. Go, take your time and enjoy!

      Dr Marcus Bunyan

       

      Footnotes

      1/ Dean, Tacita quoted in Bunbury, Stephen.“Still Lives,” in The Age. Melbourne: Fairfax Publishing, A2 section, Saturday June 6th, 2009, p. 20

      2/ Winterson, Jeanette, quoted in Bunbury, Stephen.“Still Lives,” in The Age. Melbourne: Fairfax Publishing, A2 section, Saturday June 6th, 2009, p. 20

      3/ Anonymous. Product synopsis from Tacita Dean Die Regimentstochter [Paperback] on the Amazon website [Online] Cited 19/07/2009

      4/ Anonymous. Description of Tacita Dean: ‘Palast’ on the Tate St. Ives website [Online] Cited 19/07/2009 no longer available online

      5/ Anonymous. “The Hugo Boss Prize: Tacita Dean”, on the Guggenheim Museum website [Online] Cited 19/07/2009. No longer available online

      6/ Lloyd, Tony. “Opnion: Tacita Dean at ACCA,” on the ArtInfo.com.au website [Online] Cited 19/07/2009. No longer available online


      Many thankx to ACCA for allowing me to publish the photographs and art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image

       

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'T & I (Tristan & Isolde)' 2006

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      T & I (Tristan & Isolde)
      2006
      Photogravure on twenty-five sheets
      Sheet (each): 26 3/4 x 33 7/8″ (68 x 86cm)
      Installation: 134 x 170″ (340.4 x 431.8cm)
      Niels Borch Jensen Gallery and Edition, Berlin and Copenhagen

       

      Through drawings and films, Dean makes work that is frequently characterised by a poetic sensibility and fragmented narratives exploring past and present, fact and fiction. In this monumental printed work, she addresses themes of collective memory and lost history by combining the romantic legend of ill-fated medieval lovers Tristan and Isolde (whose initials give this piece its title) with the real-life tragedy of British sailor Donald Crowhurst. Dean often uses the sea and other maritime themes in her work, including the tale of Crowhurst, which has appeared in several of her projects.

      In 1968 Crowhurst sailed from England for a solo, round-the-world yacht race and never returned. In T & I Dean connects the tale of this lost sailor to the story of Tristan and Isolde – whose tragic love story also hinges on sea voyages – through her majestic depiction of a barren, rocky coastline looking seaward. This work, based on a found postcard, includes the white, cryptic notes that Dean often scribbles on her prints and drawings. Here the musings include “start” and “stage 4,” clear theatrical directions, as well as fragments of a poem by “WSG” about an artist killed in an accident. The twenty-five-sheet composition suggests a cinematic narrative sequence, while reading it as a unified image has a breathtaking, visionary impact. The rich velvety texture of the photogravure medium contributes a nineteenth-century patina that is ideally suited to the intensity and foreboding melancholy of the subject.

      Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007, p. 269

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Banewl' 1999

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Totality
      16mm colour film
      2000

       

      16mm film projector used by Tacita Dean to project 'Merce Cunningham Performs 'Stillness''

       

      16mm film projector used by Tacita Dean to project Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) ‘Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’ (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films)’ 2007

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) ‘Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’ (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films)’ 2007

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) ‘Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’ (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films)’ 2007

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) ‘Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’ (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films)’ 2007

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Merce Cunningham Performs ‘Stillness’ (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007 (six performances; six films) (stills)
      2007

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Darmstädter Werkblock' 2007 (still)

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Darmstädter Werkblock (stills)
      16mm colour film, optical sound
      18 minutes, continuous loop
      2007

       

       

      Take one of her best pieces, Darmstädter Werkblock 2007, which looks for most of its long eighteen minutes like an exploration of an empty room, which it is. The camera pans the space, exploring the frayed fringes of its empty, textile-clad, burnt brown walls. It settles on holes, tears, seams and faded spots marking where placards used to hang. We are formally intrigued, but also curious why we should care so much about this particular empty room in what we can vaguely sense is a museum. Perhaps we are even a little bored. Only later – not in the film itself, but in the accompanying materials – are we told that these rooms usually house the “Block Beuys”, a section of the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt arranged by Beuys himself over the decade and a half between its opening and the artist’s death. The Block is mired in controversy now that the walls, which are actually left over from when the rooms showed medieval artefacts, but which evoke and mirror Beuys’s own work, are slated for renovation.

      Text from Philip Tinari. “Meditations on time,” in Tate Etc. issue 23: Autumn 2011 on the Tate website 1 September 2011 [Online] Cited 18/03/2019

       

      Stills taken from the 16mm film Darmstädter Werkblock (2007) filmed in the seven rooms that make up Block Beuys, Joseph Beuys’s installation in Darmstadt’s Hessisches Landesmuseum. In September 2007, the museum announced that they intended to renovate the rooms, and to remove the brown jute wall coverings and gray carpet that had become such a feature of the installation. The decision caused much upset in Germany and beyond. Unable to document the rooms for copyright reasons, Dean requested that instead she might document the walls and carpet and the details of the space that surround Beuys’s work without making any visual reference to the work itself. The resulting film concentrated on the patches and the stains and the labor of those who have been maintaining the space over the last four decades – the parallel entropy of the museum space with the ageing of the work itself.

      Text from Google Books

       

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

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

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

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

       

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

       

      Continuing her recent collection of film portraits, Tacita Dean’s Michael Hamburger is a moving portrayal of the poet and translator, a resident of Middleton in Suffolk and great friend of W.G. Sebald. It represented Dean’s first commission in Britain since 1999.

      For its 28 minutes, the film quietly observes the poet in his study and among the apple trees in his garden. Sunlight dissolves the frames of the windows, the most insubstantial of thresholds between this home, only one-room-deep, and what lies outdoors; a rainbow marks its watery geometry in the sky; and the apples age upon the ground, shrunken, and yet somehow becoming more intensely themselves.

      Although Hamburger is said to have despaired of reviews of his poetry which declared that he is ‘better known as a translator’, we might detect a similar deprecation of his self, by himself, in the film which shares his name. Unwilling, perhaps unable, to talk of his past and his migrations, most especially fleeing Nazism in 1933, he talks poignantly, instead, of his apple trees, of where they have come from, and of their careful cross-breeding. Purity is dismissed, and one senses with an awkward pathos that the poet is translating himself.

      Anonymous text. “Michael Hamburger: Tacita Dean,” on the FVU website [Online] Cited 18/03/2019

       

      Tacita Dean’s portrait of the poet and translator Michael Hamburger was filmed, at his home in rural Suffolk, in the last year of his life. Set against muted autumn colours, and with Hamburger performing an evocative, anecdotal inventory of the harvest from his apple orchard, the piece is a bittersweet reminder of time’s passing that deftly captures, and quietly honours, an exemplary 20th century literary figure.

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Die Regimentstochter' 2005

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Die Regimentstochter (The Daughter of the Regiment)
      2005

       

      Die Regimentstochter is the latest in a series of projects made from material turned up in flea markets, in this case, a series of 36 antique opera programs from the 30s and 40s found in the flea markets of Berlin. Like the found photographs in Dean’s 2001 FLOH, these souvenirs remain unexplained by text. They retain the silence of the lost object, and they share a riddle: each program gives a tantalising glimpse of a title or a face through a small window cut into the embossed cover. Readers will recognise Beethoven, Rossini, or perhaps a singer. A swift search in an archive would easily confirm what has been removed, but it seems likely that the missing piece is a swastika. These performances all happened during the Third Reich. When and by whom the incision was made, and why these programs were both worth disfiguring and worth keeping, remains a mystery.

      Text from the Amazon website

       

      “Things no longer visible thus enhance our view of the past, and gaps, paradoxically, become memorials that engage the beholder’s imagination more actively than a didactic demonstration could. Merely by showing what remains, Tacita Dean not only calls up in our mind’s eye a specific historical situation and its abysses, but also erects an anti-monument to the forms customarily taken by the culture of memory.”

      Andreas Kaernbach

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Die Regimentstochter' 2005

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Die Regimentstochter (The Daughter of the Regiment)
      2005

       

      They look lined up like a modern art object. The 36 opera program books are not considered as works of art. Nevertheless, the British and Berlin-based artist Tacita Dean turned them into a work of art.

      “An incidental finding inspired Tacita Dean to her artwork,” tells the House of History. “At a Berlin flea market she discovered in the year 2000 36 opera program booklets from the years 1934 to 1942. Conspicuous were the title pages: from each of the booklets was a part cut out, including from the program of the eponymous opera “The Regimental Daughter” by Gaetano Donizetti (world premiere 1840). “Said part of the title pages of those notebooks was reserved for the swastika symbol. This was cut off by the previous owners. Why, that can only be speculated, continues the house of history. “Was it shame, the fear of being punishable or even a “private” act of resistance before the end of National Socialism? The program books in any case seem to have been of great cultural value to the former owner. “

      “Whatever the motives that made the owner or the owner of the program booklets of the Berlin opera from 1934 to 1942 come to shears in order to remove the Nazi swastikas from the cover pages of the booklets: The voices speak of the desire to conclude with a time that one does not want to be reminded of – a basic motive of German post-war history that stood in the way of an honest confrontation with the era of National Socialism for a long time, “said the Minister of Culture.

      With her work, Tacita asks Dean questions about dealing with the Nazi past. Which motive behind it and who had heard the booklets remains open until today. Tacita Dean has created a work of art from these finds, which poses subtle questions about the examination of the Nazi past – but in a way that goes beyond purely historical reflection and awakens additional associations. What does that object, created by the artist from Canterbury, say about the relationship between art and politics? “Can the opera narratives be separated from the political environment in which they were performed and played?” asks the President of the Foundation for the History of the Federal Republic of Germany, Prof. Dr Hans Walter Hütter.

      Monika Grütters continues: “The fact that the dark part of our identity does not disappear through concealment and suppression, and that it becomes visible again even where it was attempted to be eradicated, impressively shows Tacita Dean’s work Regimentstochter. That is why I very much welcome the fact that this unique work of art has a place in the collection which, in view of its significance in contemporary history, necessarily belongs to it – a place in the House of History which, unlike any other museum in Germany, presents German history from 1945 in all its facets illustrated and also devoted to the effects of National Socialism on the political and cultural life in post-war Germany.”

      Daniel Thalheim. “NS-Vergangenheit als Kunst – 36 Programmhefte aus der Nazi-Zeit im Haus der Geschichte,” on the ARTEFAKTE: Das Journal für Baukultur und Kunst website 2nd September 2015 [Online] Cited 17/03/2019 translated from the German by Google Translate.

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Palast' 2004

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Palast' 2004

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Palast' 2004

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Three stills from the film Palast
      2004

       

       

      A major survey of work by the internationally acclaimed British artist Tacita Dean will open at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) on June 6th, 2009.

      In a great coup for Melbourne, fourteen recent projects by this celebrated contemporary artist will come together in what is the largest survey of Dean’s work to ever be shown outside of Europe.

      Tacita Dean is one of Britain’s most accomplished and celebrated contemporary artists. She won the New York Guggenheim’s Hugo Boss award in 2007, was a Turner Prize nominee in 1998, and has had numerous solo exhibitions in Europe – at the Schaulager in Basel, DIA Beacon in New York, the de Pont Museum in the Netherlands, the Tate Britain, UK, the Musee d’art Moderne in Paris, France and the Villa Oppenheim in Berlin, to mention just a few.

      Dean was also recently given the highly prestigious title of Royal Academician, awarded sparingly to alumni’s of the revered London art school who have achieved greatness in their work.

      Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury in 1965, and moved to Berlin in 2000 after being awarded a DAAD residency. Early works focused on the sea – most famously she explored the tragic maritime misadventures of amateur English sailor Donald Crowhurst. Since moving to Berlin she has devoted her attention to the architecture and cultural history of Germany, a recurring theme also being the salvaging, saving and collecting of things lost. Many of her works rest on the icons of modernism, heroic failures and forgotten utopian ideals.

      Dean is best known for her work with 16mm film, although she also works with photography, print and drawing. The qualities of filmmaking itself play a central role in her works – which hauntingly capture the passing of time, space and the mysteries of the natural world.

      Her work occupies a place between fact and fiction. As British author Jeanette Winterson says, “Her genius, with her slow, steady, held frames, is to allow the viewer to dream; to enter without hurry, without expectation, and to accept, as we do in a dream, a different experience of time, and a different relationship to everyday objects.”

      Included in this exhibition is Dean’s revered film installation, Merce Cunningham Performs STILLNESS (in three movements) to John Cage’s composition 4’33” with Trevor Carlson, New York City, 28 April 2007, which was recently presented at the DIA Beacon in New York, and the 2007 work Michael Hamburger. Two new wall-based works especially created for this exclusive ACCA exhibition will also feature.

      Dean is also known for creating ‘asides’ – totally absorbing texts on the subjects explored in her work. She will contribute texts on all the projects included in the exhibition for a catalogue which will be published to coincide with this unique ACCA survey.

      The exhibition has been curated by ACCA’s Artistic Director, Juliana Engberg and follows an early 2002 exhibition of Dean’s work curated by Engberg for the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

      “Tacita’s works continue to enthral and inspire me. Not only has she rescued relics from history and restored them with a visual dignity and affection in her wonderful film projects, but increasingly she rescues the traditional art forms of drawing, print making, painting, photography and film from a digital abyss,” says Juliana Engberg. “Her works have a truth and quiddity about them, but also a playful artifice and technical tactic to bring out the tactile and material in all she deals with. Tacita is a sublime story-teller, a narrator of odysseys and attempts. She is a true artist sojourner.

      In this selection of works made since 2004 we grasp the breadth of her practice and her pursuit of the time-honoured landscape, portrait and abstract genres,” she says.”

      Text from the press release from the ACCA website [Online] Cited 17/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      Tacita Dean. 'Noir et Blanc [Still]' 2006

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Noir et Blanc [Still]
      16mm black-and-white Kodak film
      2006

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Kodak' 2006 (still)

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Kodak (still)
      16mm colour and b/w film optical sound
      44 minutes loop system
      2006

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Kodak' 2006 (still)

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Kodak (still)
      16mm colour and b/w film optical sound
      44 minutes loop system
      2006

       

      As Dean said in a Guardian article back in February: “Digital is not better than analogue, but different. What we are asking for is coexistence: that analogue film might be allowed to remain an option for those who want it, and for the ascendency of one not to have to mean the extinguishing of the other.”

      In the same text, she wrote of the difference between film and digital as “not only emulsion versus pixels, or light versus electronics, but something deeper – something to do with poetry.” This poetry is exactly what she explored in one of her landmark films, Kodak (2006), a 45-minute examination of the production process of celluloid itself at a French factory fated for early closure because of a lack of demand. A film about the making of film, it hinged on the sort of super-aestheticised conceit that has become her staple. This is a tactic which allows her to turn even time itself into a structural device, as she did in 2008 with a film called Amadeus, which depicts a 50-minute crossing of the English Channel in a small fishing boat of the same name.

      Philip Tinari. “Meditations on time,” in Tate Etc. issue 23: Autumn 2011 on the Tate website 1 September 2011 [Online] Cited 18/03/2019

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965) 'Kodak' 2006 (still)

       

      Tacita Dean (English, b. 1965)
      Kodak (still)
      16mm colour and b/w film optical sound
      44 minutes loop system
      2006

       

       

      Australia Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)
      111 Sturt Street, Southbank
      Victoria 3006, Australia
      Phone: 03 9697 9999

      Opening hours:
      Tuesday – Friday 10am – 5pm
      Weekends & Public Holidays 11am – 5pm
      Monday closed
      Open all public holidays except Christmas Day and Good Friday

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      Exhibition: ‘Gay Icons’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London

      Exhibition dates: 2nd July – 18th October 2009

       

      Jill Furmanovsky (British, b. 1953) 'K.D. Lang, Le Meridien Hotel, London' 1992

       

      Jill Furmanovsky (British, b. 1953)
      K.D. Lang, Le Meridien Hotel, London
      1992
      Gelatin silver print
      © Jill Furmanovsky

       

       

      “How I wish this selection had been available to me when I was young and trying to make sense of my reactions to the world. How inspirational to have had portraits of the great and the good staring out at me telling me that I was not by any measure on my own.”

      “… it is her [K.D. Lang’s] androgynous good looks and tendency to strut on the stage which warms many lesbian hearts.”

      ~ Sandi Toksvig


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

       

       

      Fergus Greer (English, b. 1961) 'Quentin Crisp' 1989

       

      Fergus Greer (English, b. 1961)
      Quentin Crisp
      1989
      Bromide fibre print
      10 1/2 in. x 10 3/8 in. (267 mm x 264 mm)
      Given by Fergus Greer, 2006
      © National Portrait Gallery, London
      © Fergus Greer

       

       

      The first portrait exhibition to celebrate the contribution of gay people and gay icons to history and culture. 60 photographs selected by Waheed Alli, Alan Hollinghurst, Elton John, Jackie Kay, Billie Jean King, Ian McKellen, Chris Smith, Ben Summerskill, Sandi Toksvig and Sarah Waters.

      An important photography exhibition, Gay Icons, at the National Portrait Gallery (2 July – 18 October 2009) will celebrate the contribution of gay people – and the significance of the gay icon – to history and culture. Ten selectors have worked with the Gallery to make their own personal choices of six individuals, their ‘icons’. Not only does this exhibition include many well-known icons, who may or may not be gay themselves, it also reveals some surprises and will encourage a wide audience to think about familiar faces in new ways.

      The Gay Icons shown in the exhibition will include those people, living or dead, whatever their sexual orientation or interests, who the ten individual selectors regard as inspirational, or as a personal icon. Gay Icons brings together portraits of those people who are regarded as especially significant to each of the selectors, alongside those of the selectors themselves, all prominent gay figures in contemporary culture and society.

      Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, this exhibition focuses on portraits of both historical and modern figures. The choices provide a fascinating range of inspiring figures – some very famous, some heroic, others relatively unknown. Each icon is presented with information about their personal, and sometimes public, significance, some of it relating to the sitter but much of it linked to the selectors who have been prepared to share their experiences and feelings in their own exhibition texts.

      Themes running through the exhibition include inspiration and how the ‘icons’ have inspired each selector in an extremely personal sense to realise their full potential, human rights, stemming from the specific consideration of sexuality, and how this might lead us to consider parallels between the struggles of different minority groups, re-discovery, or rescuing the reputations of figures who might otherwise have been forgotten or, worse, actively disregarded and surprise at some of the perhaps unexpected choices.

      The project was developed from an initial proposal made by Bernard Horrocks, Copyright Officer, at the Gallery. The concept quickly evolved to include invitations to ten gay people – each distinguished in different fields – to act as selectors. They were chosen in consultation with their Chair, Sandi Toksvig.

      Each selector could freely choose six ‘icons’, although the Gallery decided to limit the choices to photographic portraits, and therefore to subjects who had lived, more or less, within the last 150 years. This also seemed appropriate because within this same period homosexuality was gradually accepted and made legitimate in Britain.

      The selectors are Lord Waheed Alli, Alan Hollinghurst, Sir Elton John, Jackie Kay, Billie Jean King, Sir Ian McKellen, Lord Chris Smith, Ben Summerskill, Sandi Toksvig and Sarah Waters.

      Sitters include artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney, civil rights campaigner Harvey Milk, writers Quentin Crisp, Joe Orton, Dame Daphne Du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith and Walt Whitman, composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, musicians k.d. lang, Will Young and Village People, entertainers Ellen DeGeneres, Kenneth Williams and Lily Savage, and Nelson Mandela and Diana, Princess of Wales. Their fascinating stories will be illustrated by sixty photographic portraits including works by Andy Warhol, Linda McCartney, Snowdon, Polly Borland, Fergus Greer, Terry O’Neill and Cecil Beaton.

      Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London, says: “Gay Icons is an exhibition in which inspiring stories – both private and public – are shared. These are stories of brave lives and significant achievements, told through iconic photographic images chosen by selectors who are themselves icons.

      Text from the National Portrait Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      Gisèle Freund (French born Germany, 1908-2000) 'Virginia Woolf' 1939

       

      Gisèle Freund (French born Germany, 1908-2000)
      Virginia Woolf
      1939
      © Gisèle Freund

       

      Gisèle Freund (born Gisela Freund; December 19, 1908 in Schöneberg District, Berlin – March 31, 2000 in Paris) was a German-born French photographer and photojournalist, famous for her documentary photography and portraits of writers and artists. Her best-known book, Photographie et société (1974), is about the uses and abuses of the photographic medium in the age of technological reproduction. In 1977, she became President of the French Association of Photographers, and in 1981, she took the official portrait of French President François Mitterrand.

      She was made Officier des Arts et Lettres in 1982 and Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, the highest decoration in France, in 1983. In 1991, she became the first photographer to be honoured with a retrospective at the Musée National d’art Moderne in Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou).

      Freund’s major contributions to photography include using the Leica Camera (with its 36 frames) for documentary reportage and her early experimentation with Kodachrome and 35 mm Agfacolor, which allowed her to develop a “uniquely candid portraiture style” that distinguishes her in 20th century photography.

      She is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, France near her home and studio at 12 rue Lalande.

      See her full entry on the Wikipedia website

       

      Harper & Brothers. 'Patricia Highsmith' 1942 

       

      Harper & Brothers
      Patricia Highsmith
      1942
      Gelatin silver print
      © Patricia Highsmith Collection, Swiss National Library / Swiss Literary Archives, Bern

       

      “… is a significant writer by any standard, but she deserves honouring as a lesbian and gay icon on the strength of one novel alone, The Price of Salt, a wonderfully complex and upbeat representation of lesbian love.”

      ~ Sarah Waters

       

      Patricia Highsmith (January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer best known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed “the poet of apprehension” by novelist Graham Greene.

      Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted numerous times for film, theatre, and radio. Writing under the pseudonym “Claire Morgan,” Highsmith published the first lesbian novel with a happy ending, The Price of Salt, in 1952, republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film.

      Text from the Wikipedia website

       

      Paul Morrissey (American, 1938-2024) 'Joe Dallesandro' 1968

       

      Paul Morrissey (American, 1938-2024)
      Joe Dallesandro
      1968
      Gelatin silver print
      © Paul Morrissey, 1968

       

      Joseph Angelo D’Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948), better known as Joe Dallesandro, is an American actor and Warhol superstar. Having also crossed over into mainstream roles like mobster Lucky Luciano in The Cotton Club, Dallesandro is generally considered to be the most famous male sex symbol of American underground films of the 20th century, as well as a sex symbol of gay subculture.

      Dallesandro starred in the 1968 film produced by Andy Warhol, Flesh, as a teenage street hustler. Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 declared his second starring vehicle, Trash, the “Best Film of the Year”, making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution and subcultural New York City art collective of the 1970s. Dallesandro also starred in 1972’s Heat, another Warhol film that was conceived as a parody of Sunset Boulevard. …

      Underground film career

      Dallesandro met Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in 1967 while they were shooting Four Stars, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment “In my movies, everyone’s in love with Joe Dallesandro.”

      Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, Flesh (1968), where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: “His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him”

      As Dallesandro’s underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture, he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon.

      Dallesandro appeared in Lonesome Cowboys (1968), Trash (1970), Heat (1972), Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, and Andy Warhol’s Dracula (both 1974), also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe. After filming was complete, he chose not to return to the U.S. He appeared in Serge Gainsbourg’s Je t’aime moi non plus (France, 1976), which starred Gainsbourg’s wife, British actress Jane Birkin.

      Text from the Wikipedia website

       

      Lewis Morley (Australian born Hong Kong, 1925-2013) 'Joe Orton' 1965

       

      Lewis Morley (Australian born Hong Kong, 1925-2013)
      Joe Orton
      1965
      Bromide print
      20 in. x 16 1/8 in. (508 mm x 410 mm)
      Given by the photographer, Lewis Morley, 1992
      © Lewis Morley Archive/National Portrait Gallery, London

       

       

      Gay Icons explores gay social and cultural history through the unique personal insights of ten high profile gay figures, who have selected their historical and modern icons.

      The chosen icons, who may or may not be gay themselves, have all been important to each selector, having influenced their gay sensibilities or contributed to making them who they are today. They include artists Francis Bacon and David Hockney; writers Daphne du Maurier and Quentin Crisp; composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Benjamin Britten; musicians k.d. lang, the Village People and Will Young; entertainers Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Savage and Kenneth Williams; sports stars Martina Navratilova and Ian Roberts and political activists Harvey Milk and Angela Mason.

      Their fascinating and inspirational stories will be illustrated by over sixty photographic portraits including works by Andy Warhol, Snowdon and Cecil Beaton together with specially commissioned portraits of the selectors by Mary McCartney. McCartney. All are set in a striking exhibition design conceived by renowned theatre designer, Robert Jones …

      This exhibition brings together ten selectors, chaired by Sandi Toksvig, each of whom is a prominent gay figure in contemporary culture and society. Each selector was asked to name six people, who may or may not be gay, whom they personally regard as inspirational, or an icon for them.

      Their choices provide a fascinating range of figures – some heroic, some very famous, others less well known. In the exhibition the selectors write about their choices and share their own convictions, experiences and feelings. The display also features specially commissioned portraits of the selectors by Mary McCartney.

      Anonymous text. “Gay Icons,” on the National Portrait Gallery website [Online] Cited 18/06/2022. No longer available online

       

      Ian Berry (English, b. 1934) 'Nelson Mandela' 1994

       

      Ian Berry (English, b. 1934)
      Nelson Mandela
      1994
      Gelatin silver print
      © Ian Berry/Magnum Photos

       

      “He has touched my heart, just as he has influenced the hearts and minds of people all over the world.”

      ~ Billie Jean King

      “The great single picture is emotionally satisfying, whereas getting a good journalistic story is more about being a professional”

      ~ Ian Berry

       

      Ian Berry was born in Lancashire, England. He made his reputation in South Africa, where he worked for the Daily Mail and later for Drum magazine. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville in 1960, and his photographs were used in the trial to prove the victims’ innocence.

      Henri Cartier-Bresson invited Ian Berry to join Magnum in 1962 when he was based in Paris. He moved to London in 1964 to become the first contract photographer for the Observer Magazine. Since then assignments have taken him around the world: he has documented Russia’s invasion of Czechoslovakia; conflicts in Israel, Ireland, Vietnam and the Congo; famine in Ethiopia; apartheid in South Africa. The major body of work produced in South Africa is represented in two of his books: Black and Whites: L’Afrique du Sud (with a foreword by the then French president François Mitterrand), and Living Apart (1996). During the last year, projects have included child slavery in Ghana and the Spanish fishing industry.

      Important editorial assignments have included work for National GeographicFortuneSternGeo, national Sunday magazines, EsquireParis-Match and LIFE. Ian Berry has also reported on the political and social transformations in China and the former USSR.

      Anonymous text. “Ian Berry,” on the Magnum website [Online] Cited 16/03/2019

       

      Unknown photographer. 'Bessie Smith' c. 1920s

       

      Unknown photographer
      Bessie Smith
      c. 1920s
      Gelatin silver print
      Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images
      © 1925 Getty Images

       

      “A feisty woman who always stood up for herself… She was bisexual and practically an alcoholic – the perfect icon.”

      ~ Jackie Kay

       

      Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer. Nicknamed the Empress of the Blues, she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s. She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and was a major influence on fellow blues singers, as well as jazz vocalists.

      Read her full entry on the Wikipedia website

       

      Howard Coster (British, 1885-1959) 'Sylvia Townsend Warner' 1934

       

      Howard Coster (British, 1885-1959)
      Sylvia Townsend Warner
      1934
      Half-plate film negative
      Transferred from Central Office of Information, 1974
      © National Portrait Gallery, London

       

      Sylvia Townsend Warner (6 December 1893 – 1 May 1978) was an English novelist and poet. She also made a contribution to musicology as a young woman.

       

      Bertram Park (British, 1883-1972) 'Ronald Firbank' 1917 (detail)

       

      Bertram Park (British, 1883-1972)
      Ronald Firbank (detail)
      1917

       

      “He [Ronald Firbank] is celebrated as a master of high camp, but he was also a radical technician and radical homosexualiser of the novel.”

      ~ Alan Hollinghurst

       

      Bertram Park (British, 1883-1972) 'Ronald Firbank' 1917

       

      Bertram Park (British, 1883-1972)
      Ronald Firbank
      1917

       

      Bertram Charles Percival Park, OBE, (1883-1972) was a portrait photographer whose work included British and European royalty. Engravings of his photographs were widely used on British and British Commonwealth postage stamps, currency, and other official documents in the 1930s. His theatrical portraits were the source for two paintings by Walter Sickert. With his wife Yvonne Gregory, he also produced a number of photographic books of the female nude. He was an expert in the cultivation of the rose and the editor of The Rose Annual.

      Text from the Wikipedia website

       

      Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank (17 January 1886 – 21 May 1926) was an innovative English novelist. His eight short novels, partly inspired by the London aesthetes of the 1890s, especially Oscar Wilde, consist largely of dialogue, with references to religion, social-climbing, and sexuality.

       

      Unknown Photographer. 'Winifred Atwell' c. 1950s (detail)

       

      Unknown photographer
      Winifred Atwell (detail)
      c. 1950s
      Courtesy of Getty Images

       

      “Winifred Atwell’s piano performances were simply captivating. She showed me what was possible and was a total inspiration.”

      ~ Elton John

       

      Una Winifred Atwell (27 February or 27 April 1910 or 1914 – 28 February 1983) was a Trinidadian pianist who enjoyed great popularity in Britain and Australia from the 1950s with a series of boogie-woogie and ragtime hits, selling over 20 million records. She was the first black person to have a number-one hit in the UK Singles Chart and is still the only female instrumentalist to do so.

      Read the full entry about this amazing women on the Wikipedia website

       

      Elliott and Fry. 'Alan Turing' 1951 (detail)

       

      Elliott and Fry
      Alan Turing (detail)
      29 March 1951
      © National Portrait Gallery, London

       

      Elliott & Fry was a Victorian photography studio founded in 1863 by Joseph John Elliott (14 October 1835 – 30 March 1903) and Clarence Edmund Fry (1840 – 12 April 1897). For a century the firm’s core business was taking and publishing photographs of the Victorian public and social, artistic, scientific and political luminaries. In the 1880s the company operated three studios and four large storage facilities for negatives, with a printing works at Barnet.

      The firm’s first address was 55 & 56 Baker Street in London, premises they occupied until 1919. The studio employed a number of photographers, including Francis Henry Hart and Alfred James Philpott in the Edwardian era, Herbert Lambert and Walter Benington in the 1920s and 1930s and subsequently William Flowers. During World War II the studio was bombed and most of the early negatives were lost, the National Portrait Gallery holding all the surviving negatives. With the firm’s centenary in 1963 it was taken over by Bassano & Vandyk.

      Text from the Wikipedia website

       

      Elliott and Fry. 'Alan Turing' 29 March 1951

       

      Elliott and Fry
      Alan Turing
      29 March 1951
      Vintage bromide print on photographer’s mount
      6 3/8 x 4 5/8 in. (162 mm x 117 mm)
      Given by the sitter’s mother, Ethel Sara Turing (née Stoney), 1956
      © National Portrait Gallery, London

       

      “Turing was one of the most brilliant men of the first half of the twentieth century, but the refusal of post-war society to accept his sexuality drove him to commit suicide… We can and should honour him now.”

      ~ Chris Smith

       

       

      National Portrait Gallery
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      Review: ‘Double Infinitives’ by Marco Fusinato at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

      Exhibition dates: 25th June – 25th July, 2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964) 'Double Infinitive 3' 2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964)
      Double Infinitive 3
      2009

       

       

      Double Infinitives by Marco Fusinato at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne is an excellent exhibition of large UV ink on aluminium images sourced by Fusinato from the print media.

      The images are made up of a dot pattern familiar to those who have examined photographs in the print media closely. Larger and smaller clusters of dots form the light and shade of the image. As you move closer to the works they dissolve into blocks of dots and become and optical illusion like Op Art from the 1960s. Fusinato contrasts this dot structure with the inclusion of flat panels of black ink to the left and right hand side of the images. The section lines that run through the images (for they are not one single image but made up of panels) also adds to the optical nature of the work as the lines cut the conflagrations, literally stitching the seams/scenes together.

      Each image contains an individual holding a rock enclosed in the milieu and detritus of a riot; the figures are grounded in the earth and surrounded by fire but in their obscurity, in the veiling of their eyes, the figures seem present but absent at one and the same time. They become ghosts of the fire.

      Fire consumes the bodies. The almost cut out presence of the figures, their hands clutching, throwing, saluting become mute. Here the experience of the sound, colour and movement of an actual riot is silenced in the flatness and smoothness of the images. The images possess the intensity of a newspaper reality ‘blown up’ to a huge scale by Fusinato (see the installation photograph below to get an idea of the effect). The punctum of the riot, that prick of consciousness that Barthes so liked, is translated into a silenced studium of the aluminium surface; an aural history (the sound) / oral history (the telling of the story) trapped in the structure of silence.

      There is a double jeopardy – the dissolution of the image into dots and the disintegration of the body into fire. In one of the images the upraised arm and hand of one of the rioters holds a rock with what appears to be a figure on it, surrounded by fire. To me the arm turned into one of the burning Twin Towers with smoke and fire pouring from it (see the first photograph in the installation photograph below).

      My only concern about the images were the black panels, perhaps too obvious a tool for the purpose the artist intended. Maybe the needed some small texture, like a moire pattern to reference the contours of a map and continue the topographical and optical theme. Perhaps they just needed to be smaller or occasionally placed as thin strips down the actual image itself but these are small quibbles. Overall this is an fantastic exhibition that I enjoyed immensely. 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 recognise the flatness of these figures and the quietness of violence that surrounds us.

      Music – Noise  – Silence
      Flatness – Advertising – Earth – Fire
      Rock – Space – Memory

      Dr Marcus Bunyan


      Many thankx to Anna Schwartz Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

       

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964) 'Double infinitive I' 2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964)
      Double infinitive 1
      2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964) 'Double Infinitive 4' 2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964)
      Double Infinitive 4
      2009

       

      A selection of images from the print media of the decisive moment in a riot in which a protagonist brandishes a rock against a backdrop of fire. Each image is from a different part of the world, from the early twenty-first century, and is blown up to history-painting scale using the latest commercial print technologies.

      Text by Marco Fusinato on his website

       

      Installation of Marco Fusinato 'Double Infinitives' exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

       

      Installation of Marco Fusinato Double Infinitives exhibition at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne

       

       

      Double Infinitives

      “Unheard music is better than heard.”

      Greek proverb of late antiquity

       

      “That music be heard is not essential – what it sounds like may not be what it is.”

      Charles Ives, Essays Before a Sonata

       

      “The proposition of Jacques Attali’s Noise is different. He says that while noise is a deadly weapon, silence is death.”

      David Rattray, “How I Became One of the Invisible,” Semiotext(e), 1992.

       

      The explosive communal act of rioting is most commonly delivered to an audience suspended in the stillness and silence of a photographic image. Noise is not removed in this process, it is almost amplified: the sound and action that deliver this singularly captured moment into existence are infinite, as all things remain while they are imagined, before they are anchored down by express articulation.

      Photographic representation can easily be accused of subverting the truth of events, not because what is seen in the image has not transpired, but because static images leave so much space around them for multiple narratives to be constructed. The still image is totally contingent on the consciousness that confronts it. By contrast, the near-totality of videos can give too much away …

      Sourced by Fusinato from print media published in the last few years, these images of rioting all contain an individual clutching a rock, bathed in the refractory glow of a nearby fire. The image has become prototypical, so much so that it lacks the sensation of spontaneity requisite to produce a riot. (Apropos to this predictability, Fusinato would check global newspapers after every forum or conference of global financial authorities, often finding the image he was looking for).

      Double Infinitives is a succinct allegory for the reluctance to compromise comfort overpowering radical impulses. Conversations suggest this is a conflict frequently experienced by artists. Deprived of a volatile political reality, we experience radicalism through images that act as small ruptures, reminders that the world we live in might be more severely charged than our individual experiences allow. Fusinato’s works flatten these images of volatility onto a smooth slate: they are similar and radiate with the vexed beauty of sameness. A riot is a mad and brutal spectacle, a theatre that is often documented as if it were a play. Hugely expanded in scale and rendered in the suffused gloss of advertising, the real possibility of violence that these works infer deepens the layers of the fiction rather than comprising an indicator of human concern. Those things with which we come into such gentle contact that their thorns barely prick …

      Liv Barrett
      June 2009

      Text from the Anna Schwartz Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964) 'Double Iinfinitive 2' 2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964)
      Double Iinfinitive 2
      2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964) 'Double Iinfinitive 2' 2009 (detail)

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964)
      Double Iinfinitive 2 (detail)
      2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964) 'Double Iinfinitive 5' 2009

       

      Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964)
      Double Iinfinitive 5
      2009

       

       

      Anna Schwartz Gallery
      185 Flinders Lane
      Melbourne, Victoria 3000

      Opening hours:
      Tuesday – Friday 12 – 5pm
      Saturday 1 – 5pm

      Anna Schwartz Gallery website

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      Exhibition: ‘Ricky Maynard: Portrait of a Distant Land’ at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney

      Exhibition dates: 4th June – 23rd August, 2009

       

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

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
'Coming Home' 2005

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      Coming Home
      2005
      From the series Portrait of a Distant Land
      Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned
      37.4 × 54.1cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      I can remember coming here as a boy in old wooden boats to be taught by my grandparents and my parents. I’ll be 57 this year and I have missed only one year when my daughter Leanne was born. Mutton birding is my life. To me it’s a gathering of our fellas where we sit and yarn, we remember and we honour all of those birders who have gone before us. Sometimes I just stand and look out across these beautiful islands remembering my people and I know I’m home. It makes me proud to be a strong Tasmanian black man. This is something that they can never take away from me.

      Murray Mansell, Big Dog Island, Bass Strait, 2005

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) 'The Healing Garden, Wybalenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania' 2005

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      The Healing Garden, Wybalenna, Flinders Island, Tasmania
      2005
      From the series Portrait of a Distant Land
      Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned
      34.0 x 52.0 cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

       

      This winter the Museum of Contemporary Art presents a major survey of photographic works by documentary photographer Ricky Maynard, encompassing more than two decades of the artist’s practice.

      Portrait of a Distant Land features more than 60 evocative and captivating photographic works, drawn from six bodies of work, which document the lives and culture of Maynard’s people, the Ben Lomond and Cape Portland peoples of Tasmania.

      The exhibition is curated by MCA Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Programs Keith Munro and is presented at the MCA from 4 June until 23 August 2009. Born in Launceston, Tasmania in 1953 Maynard is a self taught documentary photographer now based on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia.

      Maynard first came to prominence in the late 1980s with a photographic essay about Aboriginal mutton bird farmers and he has continued to document physical and social landscapes which form a visual record and representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia.

      “For me, photographs have always been personal and I hope to convey the intimacy of a diary. Photography has the ability to tell stories about the world and how the photograph has power to frame a culture,” said Maynard, describing his practice.

      The works presented in Portrait of a Distant Land survey a broad range of themes and issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. It includes photographs which document sites significant to Maynard’s people: ranging from serenely beautiful landscapes which follow the song lines, tribal movements and historical displacement routes of his ancestors, to the confrontational and emotionally-charged images of Indigenous people incarcerated in the South Australian prison system.

      The six photographic series by Maynard which are featured in the exhibition are The Moonbird People (1985-1988), No More Than What You See (1993), Urban Diary (1997), In The Footsteps of Others (2003), Returning To Places That Name Us (2000) and Portrait of a Distant Land (2005- ). Together these works create a form of visual diary of multiple landscapes derived from collective oral histories of Maynard’s people.”

      Press release from the MCA website [Online] Cited 05/07/2009. No longer available online

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) ‘Arthur, Wik elder’ from the series ‘Returning to places that name us’ 2000

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      Arthur, Wik Elder
      2000
      From the series Returning to Places that Name Us
      Gelatin silver photograph
      96.1 x 121.4cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      The owner of an enviable collection of antique cameras, Maynard is a lifelong student of the history of photography, particularly of the great American social reformers Jacob Riis, Lewis Hines, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. He is interested in the power of the uninflected image – of sheer veracity – as an agent of record and change. Maynard’s images cut through the layers of rhetoric and ideology that inevitably couch black history (particularly Tasmanian history) to present images of experience itself. ‘To know the meaning of a culture you must recognise the limits and meaning of your own,’ the artist explains. ‘You can see its facts but not its meaning. We share meaning by living it.’ Maynard’s photographs are, he says, about ‘leaving proof’ – about ‘… life in passing and in complicated times’.

      The word ‘Wik’ has come to denote a historic decision of the High Court of Australia rather than the name of the Indigenous peoples from the western Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland. In his intimate portraits of elders from these communities, Maynard aims to unpick this abstraction. Etched on each face is the complexity of an unspoken life story, delineated, one imagines, by hardship, perseverance and the burden – and wealth – of an extraordinary living memory. As he wrote in his artist’s statement for the exhibition Returning to Places that Name Us in 2001, ‘… I wanted a presence and portraits that spoke, and through this process to present an idea, rather than preach messages’. In this series, Maynard achieves his aim of capturing meanings that no other medium could convey.

      Hannah Fink in ‘Tradition today: Indigenous art in Australia’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2004

      © Art Gallery of New South Wales. Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website [Online] Cited 14/03/2019

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) 'Gladys Tybingoomba' 2001

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      Gladys Tybingoomba
      2001
      From the series Returning To Places That Name Us
      Gelatin silver photograph
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) 'Custodians' from the series 'Portrait of a Distant Land' 2005

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      Custodians
      2005
      From the series Portrait of a Distant Land
      Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned
      43.0 x 41.2cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) 'Vansittart Island' from the series 'Portrait of a Distant Land' 2007

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      Vansittart Island
      2007
      From the series Portrait of a Distant Land
      Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned
      33.9 x 52.1cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) 'The Spit' from the series 'Portrait of a Distant Land' 2007

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      The Spit
      2007
      From the series Portrait of a Distant Land
      Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned
      41.8 x 50.4cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953) 'The Mission' 2005 From the series 'Portrait of a Distant Land'

       

      Ricky Maynard (Australian, b. 1953)
      The Mission
      2005
      From the series Portrait of a Distant Land
      Gelatin silver photograph, selenium toned
      43.0 x 41.2cm
      © Ricky Maynard

       

      Maynard is a lifelong student of the history of photography, particularly of the great American social reformers Jacob Riis, Lewis Hines, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. Maynard’s images cut through the layers of rhetoric and ideology that inevitably couch black history (particularly Tasmanian history) to present images of experience itself. His visual histories question ownership; he claims that ‘the contest remains over who will image and own this history… we must define history, define whose history it is, and define its purpose as well as the tools used for the telling it’.

      In Portrait of a distant land Maynard addresses the emotional connection between history and place. He uses documentary style landscapes to illustrate group portraits of Aboriginal peoples’ experiences throughout Tasmania. Each work combines several specific historical events, creating a narrative of shared experience – for example The Mission relies on historical records of a small boy whom Europeans christened after both his parents died in the Risdon massacre. This work highlights the disparity between written, oral and visual histories, as Maynard attempts to create ‘a combination of a very specific oral history as well as an attempt to show a different way of looking at history in general’.

      Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website [Online] Cited 14/03/2019

       

       

      Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)
      140 George Street
      The Rocks, Sydney, Australia

      Opening hours: 10am – 5pm daily

      MCA website

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