Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.16 2010 Digital photograph
Missing in Action (dark kenosis)
Several people have asked me for some text to help describe the themes that my work investigates.
My work has always investigated the spaces and environments that people inhabit. Over the last few years the work has come to focus on fighter aircraft and the people (usually men) who fly them – the reason to fly such war machines, to fight for freedom, democracy, to bomb, to kill – the moral and ethical choices that human beings make, to undertake one action over another.
I have returned to childhood influences: I remember as a kid making toy models by Airfix and Tamiya of tanks and fighter planes and flying the planes from my bedroom ceiling. The work is strongly anti-war. Most of the work features shifts in texture, of light and dark and the occasional use of text to illuminate personal feelings. Text that is hidden among this particular body of work includes:
~ “The true enemy is war itself” from the anti-war movie Crimson Tide (1995) ~ “The destiny of man is in his own soul” Herodotus (484-420BC) ~ “We are all of us children of earth” Franklin D. Roosevelt: Flag Day Address June 13, 1942
Conceptually the work is based upon an investigation into Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’ and the paradoxes of such (self) determination:
“Technologies of the self (also called care of the self or practices of the self) are what Michel Foucault calls the methods and techniques (“tools”) through which human beings constitute themselves. Foucault argued that we as subjects are perpetually engaged in processes whereby we define and produce our own ethical self-understanding. According to Foucault, technologies of the self are the forms of knowledge and strategies that “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.””1
The next series are the same planes with a red colour (red kenosis) and after that I have some silhouette aircraft recognition cards – just the black shapes of the jet fighters – with colours behind, should be a good series!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Foucault, M. (1988) “Technologies of the self,” in L. H. Martin, H. Gutman and P. H. Hutton (eds.,). Technologies of the self. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, page 18 quoted on Wikipedia.“Technologies of the Self.” [Online] Cited 23/06/2010.
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.
Media opening of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A huge posting – and another ‘you saw it here first’ on Art Blart!
A simple, spacious hang shows off some wonderfully vibrant paintings in the new Winter Masterpieces blockbuster at the NGV. The use of strong yellow and pale grey wall colour compliments the paintings. Conversely, other rooms have a dark brown and very dark grey wall colour. Some people will like the effect but I found the dark grey a little too sombre and heavy in the room dedicated to the work of Max Beckmann. Overall a fantastic range of paintings, especially those by the German Expressionists and a luminous painting by Odilon Redon. To see them in Australia is a joy to behold.
Note on the photographs: All the photographs were taken with a timed exposure with the camera on a tripod. While this leads to ghosting as people walk through the shot it also adds a sense of the exhibition as a living entity. I find it preferable to the use of flash photography as flash destroys any ambience that the rooms possess. The photographs are in chronological order, proceeding from the beginning of the exhibition to the end.
PS. Thankx to the many people who have emailed me saying that they love the photographs, especially to Sue Coffey who said the posting looked superb = it makes it all worthwhile!
Media opening of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbei’s panting Goethe in the Roman countryside 1787 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (German, 1751-1829) Goethe in the Roman countryside (Goethe in der römischen Campagna) 1787 Oil on canvas 161.0 x 197.5cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1878 as a gift by Baroness Salomon von Rothschild
Installation view of the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbei’s panting Goethe in the Roman countryside 1787 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Alfred Sisley (English, 1839-1899) Banks of the Seine in Autumn (installation view) 1879 Oil on canvas Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Charles-Francois Daubigny (French 1817-1878) French Orchard at Harvest Time (Le verger) 1876 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Charles-Francois Daubigny (French, 1817-1878) French Orchard at Harvest Time (Le verger) (installation view) 1876 Oil on canvas Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of Odilon Redon (French 1840-1916) Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Le Christ et la Samaritaine) c. 1895 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Le Christ et la Samaritaine) c. 1895 Oil on canvas 64.8 x 50.0cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1960
Installation view of the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
“The appeal of the Städel Institute lies in the tremendous energy filling that confined space. Virtually all of the great emotions that have lived in the souls of the peoples of Europe are there, and all in superb works.”
Alfred Lichtwark, Director the Hamburg Museum, 1905
One of the world’s finest collections of 19th and 20th century art is showing exclusively in Melbourne as the seventh exhibition in the hugely popular Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series at the National Gallery of Victoria.
European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th-20th Century brings together almost 100 works by 70 artists from one of Germany’s oldest and most respected museums, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Dr Gerard Vaughan, NGV Director, said: “European Masters presents a comprehensive overview of the Städel Museum’s holdings of painting and sculpture from the last two centuries of European art. This blockbuster exhibition provides a superb survey of the key artistic movements of the time, including Realism, Impressionism and Post Impressionism, German Romanticism, Expressionism and Modernism, and French Symbolism.”
European Masters then traces the development of German art, introducing audiences to rarely seen Realist and Symbolist masterpieces from artists such as Max Liebermann and Franz von Stuck.
A major highlight of the exhibition is a powerful selection of German Expressionist paintings, with ten poignant works by Max Beckmann, including The synagogue in Frankfurt am Main and his powerful Double Portrait, all of which have left the Städel for the first time to be shown outside of Europe.
The exhibition also includes a breathtaking selection of Swiss, Belgian and Dutch works by artists such as Arnold Böcklin, Fernand Khnopff and Vincent Van Gogh.
“Exclusive to Melbourne, European Masters provides an unprecedented opportunity to see a spectacular group of masterpieces spanning the dynamic and transformative years of the 19th and 20th centuries. There is something in this exhibition for everyone, from the beauty and immediacy of French Impressionism to the raw power of German Expressionism. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see superb pictures that rarely travel outside of Europe,” said Dr. Vaughan.
Founded in 1816 by the Frankfurt financier Johann Friedrich Städel, the Städel Museum has one of the world’s finest art collections. The collection boasts 2700 paintings, 600 sculptures and over 100,000 prints and drawings documenting the development of European art and culture.
This year Melbourne Winter Masterpieces includes European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th-20th Century at the NGV, and Tim Burton at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Installation views of Max Liebermann (German 1847-1935, lived in France 1874-78) Samson and Delilah (Simson und Delila) 1901 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Max Liebermann (German, 1847-1935, lived in France 1874-1878) Samson and Delilah (Simson und Delila) 1901 Oil on canvas 151.2 x 212.0cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1910
Max Klinger (German, 1857-1920) Portrait of a Roman woman on a flat roof (Bildnis einer Römerin auf einem Dach in Rom) 1891 Oil on canvas 182 x 182cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1926 as a gift in commemoration of Walther Rathenau
Installation view at left of Max Klinger (German 1857-1920) Portrait of a Roman woman on a flat roof (Bildnis einer Römerin auf einem Dach in Rom) 1891 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Max Beckmann room, installation view of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Max Beckmann (German 1884-1950, worked in the Netherlands 1937-1947, United States 1947-1950) Female dancer (Tanzerin) (installation view) c. 1935 Bronze Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880-1938) Reclining woman in a white chemise (Liegende Frau im weiβen Hemd) 1909 Oil on canvas 95.0 x 121.0cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1950
The exhibition Cloud by Australian artist Guan Wei at Arc One Gallery in Melbourne contains two bodies of work that are outstanding: the series of paintings on paper titled Buddha’s Hand and the series of five figurative sculptures titled Cloud. Each body of work compliments and informs the other.
The small Buddha’s Hand paintings (see below) are the most delicate of creatures – sensual, poetic almost fetishistic in their composition and utterly beguiling in their beauty. Referencing the history of cave paintings of the Buddha, Wei updates the ancient allegories expressing his message of harmony and leisure, identity and place through visual symbolic representation. These works are profoundly moving, the figurative compositions balanced masterfully through colour, shape and form, studded with the punctum of red bindi-like energy centres arising from the faceless yogic figures.
Sitting on white pedestals and positioned close to the Buddha’s Hand paintings in the gallery are the series of five Cloud figures (see below). Made of bronze that has been spray painted white these are wonderful sculptures, full of delicious humour and vibrancy. There is a sensuality and delicacy about the figures that is emphasised by their snowy whiteness, a whiteness that subverts the tactility, colour and weight that one usually associates with the metal bronze. Here the figure has, variously, it’s head in the clouds while pensively crossing arms; bearing the weight of the world on the back while the vacant mouth is open; preparing to throw the cloud as Zeus would a thunderbolt; reclining while balancing the cloud on one foot and with one foot stuck in the earth that is cloud. The cloud becomes a metaphor for thought and action in the world, acting on the world. In these sculptures there is no creed nor race, no ideology or nation and I believe that Wei attains his stated aim to redefine our relationship with one another and nature by transcending both. I am not alone in liking these sculptures – they have proved very popular and all five sculptures in editions of five have already sold out!
Other work in the exhibition is more prosaic – a multi-panelled screen, the On Cloud and Zodiac series never seem to breathe the same rarefied air as the above two bodies of work. They are disappointments that only serve to illuminate how brilliant holding the Buddha’s hand and living your life with your head in the clouds can be.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Angela Connor and Arc One Gallery for allowing me to reproduce the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Guan Wei (China, b. 1957) Buddha’s hand 2010
Guan Wei (China, b. 1957) Buddha’s hand 2010
“I hope that we will be able to transcend the restrictions imposed on us by such notions as nation, ethnicity, ideology, cultural and history, and redefine our relationship with one another and nature.”
Guan Wei
Guan Wei is an adept storyteller who masterfully engages his audiences. Retaining the humour, wisdom and cross-cultural knowledge that have become characteristics of his ongoing oeuvre, his work breathes an awareness of our current social and environmental dilemmas exploring ideas of immigration, colonisation, identity politics and cultural tolerance.
Flirtatious and aesthetically whimsical, Guan Wei’s works are instantly recognisable. In this latest exhibition, Cloud, Guan Wei fuses sculpture, drawings and paintings to form what is part of his most beguiling trademark – ‘the art of idleness’. For the first time since returning to China, he will present new sculptures that employ his ongoing preoccupation with the figure and the figure in relation to the natural form. These sculptures are Guan Wei’s personal visual symbols of harmony and leisure. They form the thread for the four series of works in this exhibition.
During the past fifteen years, Guan Wei has help change the identity of Australian Art. He draws on his own experience as a Chinese national who migrated to Australia from China in the period following the Tiananmen Square massacre (1989). Guan Wei has spent twenty years living and working as an artist raising the awareness of Australia being a multicultural country. He has had over 40 solo exhibitions, been the recipient of numerous awards and included in every major collection. In 2009, Guan Wei was selected for the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Press release from the Arc One Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/06/2010 no longer available online
Guan Wei (China, b. 1957) Cloud No.4 2009 Bronze statue edition of 5 39 x 30 x 25cm
Guan Wei (China, b. 1957) Cloud No.5 2009 Bronze statue edition of 5 47 x 35 x 35cm
Arc One Gallery 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne, 3000 Phone: +61 3 9650 0589
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.11 2010 Digital photograph
Missing in action (dark kenosis)
A new body of work Missing in Action (dark kenosis) 2010 is now online on my website.
There are eighty-two images in the series which are like a series of variations in music with small shifts in tone and colour. Below are a selection of images from the series. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Many thankx to the people who have emailed me saying how much they like the new series of work.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.
Kenosis
“In Christian theology, Kenosis is the concept of the ‘self-emptying’ of one’s own will and becoming entirely receptive to God and his perfect will.”
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.19 2010 Digital photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.35 2010 Digital photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.46 2010 Digital photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.49 2010 Digital photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.67 2010 Digital photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.71 2010 Digital photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.76 2010 Digital photograph
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Chi 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Apologies for the late posting on this exhibition but I only received the images for the posting today.
A strong body of work by Owen Leong, twelve portraits of Asian-Australians, their faces digitally overlaid with the unique wing patterns of the Bogong moth, an insect often seen as a pest in Australia. Uniformly lit, of consistent size and presented in modern white frames the series hangs quietly but impressively in the upstairs space of the Anna Pappas Gallery. Here the uniqueness of human physiognomy (and attendant modifications such as scars, piercings and tattoos) is symbiotically paired with that of the moth – it is almost as though one breathes the other – with the eyes of the humans occluded, becoming blackened pits.
The slightly amateurish digital blacking out of some of the eyes is my only point of contention: perhaps this was intentional (?) but sharp shape selections in Photoshop do not make for a good blend between layers of information. Be that as it may, Leong’s practice of selective breeding applied to humans has produced some beautiful, eloquent photographs that promote difference and diversity through a palpable intimacy with the subject matter.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Anna Pappas, Leah Crossman and the Anna Pappas Gallery for allowing me to use the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Jac 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Justin 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Raina 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Artists: Lionel Bawden, Penny Byrne, Nicholas Folland, Locust Jones, Rhys Lee, Rob McHaffie, Derek O’Connor, Alex Spremberg, Madonna Staunton
Lionel Bawden (Australian, b. 1974) formless worlds move through me 2010 Coloured Staedtler pencils, epoxy, incralac 51.0 x 51.0 x 9.5cm
Some good work in this exhibition – especially the Staedtler hexagonal coloured pencil constructions by Lionel Bawden. Beautifully crafted by hand they remind me of ghosts, the ‘millefiori’ (thousand flowers) of Italian glass and the inside of caverns with their stalactites.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Karen Woodbury Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Alex Spremberg (Australian born Germany, b. 1950) Inside skins 2002
These artists have been selected for their interest in ideas of assemblage and re-use of pre-existing materials. Working across a range of media, each artist in the exhibition employs a process of manipulation to create completely different concepts and forms with their finished works. These works comprise of found objects and assembled from disparate elements, scavenged or foraged by the artists and juxtaposed in inventive ways. All works included in The Navigators take on their own form and imbue a new meaning to the original source materials.
Not originally intended as art materials, yet these artists have seen potential for a new idea in the materials; creating a new thought for the object. The original useful element of the preformed material thus comes under more aesthetic and creative significance. The impetus for such artistic practice is located in a desire by these artists to re-use, re-model, reshape and recycle within their practices. Despite an obvious interest and emphasis in the materiality of the works, the conceptual underpinning are the key motivation within these varying works and pose questions regarding the value of the objects within society. The artists included in The Navigators are continuously surveying and navigating their practice, allowing for deeper exploration in their work.
The exhibition will include various two and three-dimensional objects that interact with each other in unique ways. In the example of Lionel Bawden’s sculptures, his work exploits hexagonal coloured pencils as a sculptural material, reconfiguring and carving into amorphous shapes. Here the rich qualities of colour are explored as pencils are carved, shaped and fused together. Bawden explores themes of flux, transformation, rhythm and repetition as preconditions to our experience of the physical world. Bawden’s wall mounted works ‘the caverns of temporal suspension’ explore shapes within and outside the work as they hover ominously, melting, conjoined, growing, in transformation. These works are at the forefront of his current practice.
Penny Byrne’s work makes use of vintage porcelain sculptures that are adorned with a range of materials. Through this process, Byrne makes the base sculptures appear starkly different to that of the original, taking on new connotations that are often humorous and quirky but also convey political and social issues. In her work Mercury Rising. Hunted, Slaughtered, Eaten vintage porcelain dolphins and new plastic Manga figurines are employed to relate to the annual Japanese slaughter of tens of thousands dolphins as highlighted in the documentary ‘The Cove’. The Japanese eat the dolphins and then suffer mercury poisoning due to the high mercury levels in the dolphins flesh, leading to symptoms of madness.
Nicholas Folland’s Navigator sculptures are indicative Folland’s continued interest in utilising, modifying and experimenting with various sourced materials. These sculptures comprise of various upturned intricately detailed crystal objects that sit above a wood panelled shelf. These glass object are lit and act as beacons or floating satellite cities. Folland personifies the intrepid creative explorer via his navigation of various found materials.
Locust Jones’ three-dimensional globes are made from papier mache and pictorially and graphically convey global issues. These works sit on the floor and allow the viewer to orient themselves around the works allowing for a detached, objective perspective on contemporary societal issues. The quickly worked surfaces reflect a stream of consciousness in process. Imagery and themes are taken from various media such as the Internet, photojournalism, film culture and nightly news broadcasts.
The two sculptures in the exhibition by Rhys Lee imbue associations of debris and deal with found objects such as a money box, a dead bird and a clowns face. These trophy-like pieces are decorated by old, worn and found vintage materials that engage with the everyday. The intimate scale of these works do not account for the potency of symbolism and accumulation of collected ideas. The blistered silver patina and bronze sculptures allude to a dark gothic sentiment that extends beyond the morphing forms. The shapes have been smashed, manipulated and stuck back together again resulting in frozen miniature icons that represent a contemporary zest for defiance.
Rob McHaffie’s works comprise a pastiche of painted anonymous unrelated objects and shapes that somehow come together to create unlikely compositions and formations. The highly skilled execution of McHaffie’s paintings attracts the viewer, who is then faced with a banality in subject matter, often of depictions of clothing, crumpled paper, plants and disfigured creatures and figures. These perfectly rendered images of everyday objects are unsettling in their clarity and realism, which are then skewed, moulded and displaced in unlikely relationships. There is a sense of a deliberate haphazard nature to McHaffie’s work that draws upon a range of elements brought together to mimic something else. Humour surfaces through this stylistic creative process.
Derek O’Connor’s re-worked painting collages resemble distorted and fragmented realities and stories via the manipulation and playful technique of alteration and re-use of book covers and record album and EP covers. O’Connor’s characteristic gestural sweeping luscious brushstrokes are employed with precision yet allow for organic spontaneity. The old material takes on new meaning and are given new life via O’Connor’s creations.
Alex Spremberg’s work Inside Skins highlights the artist’s accidental processes at work. This sculptural piece was made as an ancillary to his broader practice – working with acrylic, enamel and varnish on board and canvas. These objects where literally created via chance – an after thought that was noticed to be a finished piece in its own right. Left to dry within their containers these ‘skins’ were extracted and proved to provide aesthetic attraction and conceptual ideas of the ready-made.
The mainstay of Madonna Staunton’s practice surrounds the physicality of assemblage. Essentially she is a collage artist. The components of her two- and three-dimensional assemblages are usually drawn from old, faded and battered discards such as frames and chairs that are carefully put together in new ways and given another life. A play between precision and randomness animates her work. Her sensitivity to tonal and formal arrangement always remains acute during this process and the results are austerely and chaotically beautiful.
Press release from the Karen Woodbury Gallery website [Online] Cited 20/05/2010 no longer available online
Nicholas Folland (Australian, b. 1967) Navigators 1 2008 Glassware, table and lightbox 25.0 x 110.0 x 87.0cm
Nicholas Folland (Australian, b. 1967) Navigators 2 2008 Glassware, table and lightbox 25.0 x 110.0 x 87.0cm
It is with great sadness that I hear of the passing of Mari Funaki on the 13th May 2010.
I met Mari many times and she was always wonderfully generous with her energy, knowledge and enthusiasm. She was an amazing artist, I loved her work especially the stunning anamorphic black bracelets and the fact that she used photography of Bernd and Hiller Becher as part of her inspiration. My conversation with Mari in 2006 and photographs of her work can be found on the Notes from a Conversation with Mari Funaki posting.
Vale Mari Funaki
“A memorial will be held on Tuesday June 1st, 2010 at 11.00am in THE GREAT HALL of the National Gallery of Victoria, International.“
Mari Funaki outside Gallery Funaki Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Paul Ogier (Australia born New Zealand, b. 1974) Saint Stephen 2009 Courtesy of the artist
Mark Hislop from the Monash Gallery of Art (MGA) has asked me to post details of the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2010. More than happy too. To see the standard take a look at the 2009 Finalists online. Details on how to enter are posted below. Have a go, get your entries in, you never know who will win!
Many thankx to the MGA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a large version of the image.
Simon Terrill (Australian, b. 1969) Bank of England 9AM 2009 Courtesy of the artist
The Monash Gallery of Art Foundation is pleased to announce the CALL FOR ENTRIES for the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2010.
The MGA Foundation will once again showcase the work of Australia’s best photographers in Australia’s most coveted photography award. Photographers from all over Australia are encouraged to submit entries to this year’s Bowness Photography Prize. Each year, finalists are drawn from the breadth of Australian photographic practice: editorial, commercial, street and fine art.
In recognition of the support shown the prize by Australian photographers, prize money for this year’s award has increased substantially. Last year, a record 459 photographers submitted entries in anticipation of the $20,000 non-acquisitive first prize. In 2010, photographers will be competing for $25,000 first prize and $1,000 People’s Choice Award.
The winner of the 2010 Bowness Photography Prize and Honourable Mentions will be announced on Thursday night 23 SEP 2010 during a cocktail party held at MGA. Winners and finalists will enjoy unprecedented visibility for their work. All finalists will be published on MGA’s flickr page and included in a substantial catalogue. The winner will receive the $25,000 first prize. And in recognition of the strength of the prize and MGA’s commitment to promoting the best of contemporary Australian photography, Honourable Mentions will have the opportunity to stage an exhibition at MGA.
This year’s entries will be judged by Gael Newton, Senior Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Australia, Max Pam, Australian photographer, and Shaune Lakin, Director of MGA.
About the BOWNESS Photography Prize
Established in 2006 to promote excellence in photography, the annual non-acquisitive William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize is an initiative of the MGA Foundation. The Bowness Photography Prize has quickly become Australia’s most coveted photography prize. It is also one of the country’s most open prizes for photography. In the past, finalists have included established and emerging photographers, art and commercial photographers. All film-based and digital work from amateurs and professionals is accepted. There are no thematic restrictions.
The 2009 Bowness Prize recipient was Paul Knight. Since winning the Prize, Knight has received an Australia Council for the Arts Skills and Development Grant and is currently presenting new work at the prestigious international artfair Art Cologne.
Jane Burton (Australian, b. 1966) Ivy # 3 2009 Courtesy of the artist and Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Justin 2009 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery, Melbourne
Paul Knight (Australian, b. 1976) 14 months # 01 2008 Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne Winner of the William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize 2009
Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Phone: +61 3 8544 0503
John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #2 2010 Digital print and oil on Belgian linen 240 x 331cm image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
What can one say about work that is so confronting, poignant and beautiful – except to say that it is almost unbearable to look at this work without being emotionally charged, to wonder at the vicissitudes of human life, of events beyond one’s control.
Simply, this is the best exhibition that I have seen in Melbourne so far this year.
The exhibition tells the story of the massacre of 300,000 people in the city of Nanjing in Jiangsu, China by Japanese troops in December, 1937 in what was to become known as the Nanjing Massacre. It also tells the story of a group of foreigners led by German businessman John Rabe and American missionary Minnie Vautrin who set up a “safety zone” to protect the lives of at least 250,000 Chinese citizens. The work is conceptually and aesthetically well resolved, the layering within the work creating a holistic narrative that engulfs and enfolds the viewer – holding them in the shock of brutality, the poignancy of poetry and the (non)sublimation of the human spirit to the will of others.
On the left wall of the gallery are three large mixed-media paintings of screen printed photographs of the Nanjing Flower Market taken the year before the massacre (see three images directly below). The printing of the press photographs at such a scale (a la Marco Fusinato) emphasises the dot structure of the photograph, the intensity of a newspaper reality ‘blown up’ to a huge scale. Unfortunately, you cannot see this deconstruction of the image very well in the examples below (clicking on the lower two images to get a larger version will give you a better idea), but believe me it most effective in creating a spatio-temporal distance between the viewer and the image. The dissolution of the image into dots is surmounted by painted cherry blossoms, bleached corals and piles of logs that overlay the photographic text. The reason-ances are sublime. The mind tries to process the distance between the death of the people and the photograph, the knowledge of what is about to happen to them, and the sensuality of the buds and flowers: new life!
To my friend and I the coral in the last painting reminded us both of the emanations of psychic phenomena at a seance, a series of radiations originating in the godhead.
On the right wall of the gallery is a grid of three rows of twenty images that make up the work Safety Zone (2010, see bottom image). Made up of chalk drawings on black paper (a la Rudolf Steiner), writings by the Europeans including Vautrin and Rabe, statistics, gruesome photographs of the massacre and observations by the artist, this is in part both a confronting and benevolent work.
Archival photographs are printed digitally (the dot structure working to less affect here); some vertical photographs are shown horizontally. Text written in chalk is erased with a sweep of the hand. Thoughts of the Buddha, the infinity symbol linked to the Buddha’s Ray and the Buddha’s Heart are a physical presence. Two blue chalk lines intersect and cross over, so poignant and sublime amongst the destruction that surrounds. Golf clubs, beer bottles, bayonets.
‘THERE IS NOTHING LEFT’ 13.12.37 (Robert Wilson)
‘HOME SICKNESS’
‘Simulacrum > Heart’
A simply drawn coffin shape on black ground
‘I began to roam around the city preventing further atrocities myself’
‘They will not do so, if it is in my power to prevent it’ (Minnie Vautrin)
UNSPEAKABLE ACTS OF EVIL … BECOMING BANAL
At both ends of the gallery is the last element in this play of hope, mutability and madness. Two large oil-on-linen paintings, titled The Crippled Tree #1 & #2 (see images below) “provide another register to the memory of the event. According to Young, the battered and split logs, painted in the negative, resonate and recollect the violence done to the victims of the massacre.” Unfortunately the two small images below cannot really give you an idea of the metaphorical power of these paintings. Like twisted and broken bodies larger than life size they become the glue that holds the other elements of the exhibition together. Without them there would be no transition from one side of the gallery, one element of the work to another. In their solarisation they emote an energy that flows down the length of the gallery = is this possible? Yes it is!
You feel the cracking of their branches, the amputation of their limbs but their spirit, their efflorescence (which, most appropriately considering the use of the Flower Market photographs, means “to flower out” in French) shines on. Such is the nature of the human spirit. Take the time and see this work. It is well worth the journey.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the artist, Serena Bentley and Anna Schwartz Gallery for allowing me to reproduce the images in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #3 2010 Digital print and oil on Belgian linen 240 x 331cm image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) #1 2010 digital print and oil on Belgian linen 240 x 331cm image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
Safety Zone, John Young’s latest project presents a series of intricate paintings that reassemble historical reminiscences of human survival by linking experimental contemporary art with investigative visual reports, in historical photographs and documents.
This body of work draws attention to incidents across the city of Nanjing in Jiangsu, China, just moments before the onset of the Nanjing Massacre, which followed the capture of the city by Japanese Imperial Forces on 13 December 1937. In the six weeks following the invasion, a quarter of a million Chinese citizens were killed in what the American historian Iris Chang described as the ‘forgotten holocaust of World War II’.
Through Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking, the world was introduced to the personal memoirs of foreigners living in Nanjing who had been working on creating a ‘safety zone’ that would protect 250,000 Chinese citizens from the invading Japanese troops. Two of the twenty-one foreigners who stayed in the city to help set up the Nanjing Safety Zone were the American missionary Minnie Vautrin and the German businessman John Rabe. Their experiences have been noted by Young, who travelled to Nanjing, Berlin and Heidelberg, conducting first hand interviews and research for this compelling multi-layered project which exemplifies the transformative function of art.
The installation Safety Zone consists of three series of works which reference acts of resistance by individuals to protect fellow human beings against these atrocities that were underpinned by autocratic regimes and nationalist ideologies.
In the Flower Market (Nanjing 1936) series, carefully painted spring flowers and bleached corals are superimposed over historical photographs taken in Nanjing a year prior to the massacre. The meticulously rendered impressions of logs in The Crippled Tree #1 & #2 provide another register to the memory of the event. According to Young, the battered and split logs, painted in the negative, resonate and recollect the violence done to the victims of the massacre.
The carefully assembled bank of 60 chalk drawings and digital prints that make up the centerpiece of Safety Zone provides an intricate understanding of the humanity that lies beneath this tragic event through the revelation of extraordinary acts of self-sacrifice.
Dr Thomas J. Berghuis Department of Art History and Film, The University of Sydney
John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) The Crippled Tree #1 2010 Oil on linen 274 x 183cm image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) The Crippled Tree #2 2010 Oil on linen 274 x 183cm image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
John Young (Australian born Hong Kong, b. 1956) Safety Zone (installation view) 2010 60 works, digital prints on photographic paper and chalk on blackboard-painted archival cotton paper Image courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
Anna Schwartz Gallery 185 Flinders Lane Melbourne, Victoria 3000
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Untitled (touch wood) multiples (installation view) 2009 Burnt wood, resin Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A beautiful exhibition of objects by Swiss/Italian artist Kiko Gianocca at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne, one full of delicate resonances and remembrances.
Obelisk pendants in blackened and silvered wood, Neolithic standing stones, totemic, silent; The hole through the object akin to ‘seeing’ through time. Exposed wood on base (touch wood) as grounding.
The standing stone installation an altar piece, a dark reliquary (see image above)
Glass vessels with internal funnels filled with the gold detritus of disassembled objects, found pendants: Horse, Anchor, Four leaf clover, Swan, Hammer & sickle (see images below)
The distance between the bail – the finding that attaches the pendant to the necklace – and the remainder/reminder of the vessel itself. What a distance!
As Sally Mann would articulate, ‘What remains’1 …
Lives previous to this incarnation; jewels embedded in dust. The captured potency of displaced objects. Personal and yet anonymous at one and the same time.
Brooches of gloss and matt black resin plates. A plastic black, almost Rembrandt-esque.
On the reverse images exposed like a photographic plate, found images solidified in resin.
The front: the depths of the universe, navigating the dazzling darkness The back: memories, forgotten, then remade, worn like a secret against the beating chest. Only the wearer knows!
Here is a territorialization, “a double movement, where something accumulates meanings (re-territorialization), but does so co-extensively with a de-territorialization where the same thing is disinvested of meanings.”2
As Kiki Gianocca asks, “I am not sure if I grasp the memories that sometimes come to mind. I start to think they hold me instead of me holding them.”
 Time is the distance between objects. No objects. Space is the distance between events. No events.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ “Mann’s fifth book, What Remains, published in 2003, is based on the show of the same name at the Corcoran Museum in Washington, DC and is in five parts. The first section contains photographs of the remains of Eva, her greyhound, after decomposition. The second part has the photographs of dead and decomposing bodies at a federal Forensic Anthropology Facility (known as the ‘body farm’). The third part details the site on her property where an armed escaped convict was killed. The fourth part is a study of the grounds of Antietam (the site of the bloodiest single day battle in American history during the Civil War. The last part is a study of close-ups of the faces of her children. Thus, this study of mortality, decay and death ends with hope and love.” Sally Mann. Wikipedia [Online] Cited 02/05/2010
2/ “For them (Deleuze and Guattari), assemblages are the processes by which various configurations of linked components function in an intersection with each other, a process that can be both productive and disruptive. Any such process involves a territorialization; there is a double movement where something accumulates meanings (re-territorialization), but does so co-extensively with a de-territorialization where the same thing is disinvested of meanings. The organization of a territory is characterized by such a double movement … An assemblage is an extension of this process, and can be thought of as constituted by an intensification of these processes around a particular site through a multiplicity of intersections of such territorializations.” Wood, Aylish. “Fresh Kill: Information technologies as sites of resistance ” in Munt, Sally (ed.,). Technospaces: Inside the New Media. London: Continuum, 2001, p. 166.
“I own a stone that a friend passed to me, and a shackle that Michael gave me.
I found a curious object in Lisbon at the fleamarket, I paid one euro for it and I still don’t know what it is.
Yesterday I had a look again at the picture you shot. I am not sure if I grasp the memories that sometimes come to mind.
I start to think they hold me instead of me holding them.”
Kiko Gianocca, April 2010
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Untitled (touch wood) multiples (installation views) 2009 Wood, silver Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Horse, Anchor, Four leaf clover and Swan (left to right) (installation view) 2009 18k gold, glass Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Horse (installation view) 2009 18k gold, glass Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Anchor (installation view) 2009 18k gold, glass Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Swan (installation view) 2009 18k gold, glass Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of exhibition with Untitled (touch wood) burnt wood multiples in distance Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) Man & dog (installation view) 2009 Found image, resin, silver Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) The waterfall 2009 Found image, resin, silver
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) The dog (installation view) 2009 Found image, resin, silver Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) The kiss (reverse) (installation view) 2009 Found image, resin, silver Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) The way up (reverse) (installation view) 2009 Found image, resin, silver Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Kiko Gianocca (Swiss, b. 1974) The beast (reverse) (installation view) 2009 Found image, resin, silver Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Gallery Funaki Sackville House Apartment 33 27 Flinders Lane Melbourne 3000 Australia
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Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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