Exhibition: ‘Icon & archive: photography & the World Wars’ at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 16th April – 11th July, 2010

Many thankx to Mark Hislop and the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to reproduce the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photos for a larger version of the image.

Photographer unknown. 'Matron Grace Wilson doing a round, Mudros' 1915 from the exhibition 'Icon & archive: photography & the World Wars' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, April - July, 2010

Photographer unknown
Matron Grace Wilson doing a round, Mudros
1915
Gelatin silver print
Australian War Memorial

NOTHING could have prepared Grace Wilson for her first day at Turks Head Point on the drought-stricken island of Lemnos, where she was to run a field hospital for injured soldiers being shipped out from Gallipoli, 65km away.

“Things are just too awful for words… we found only a bare piece of ground with wounded men in pain, still in filthy, bloodstained clothes, lying amid stones and thistles,” she wrote in her diary.

Matron Wilson and her 40 nurses had arrived in the island’s Mudros harbour aboard the Dunluce Castle on August 2, 1915, to discover to their dismay there was no sign of the supply ship Ascot, which had been due there a week earlier with the tents, medical equipment, crates of tinned food and other essentials.

In a bizarre display of military pomp, a regimental piper led the women – wearing heavy, ankle-length dresses and petticoats – on a long march in searing summer heat to what would be their home for the most harrowing five months of their lives…”

Read the full article: Daryl Passmore. “Brisbane snubs unsung war heroine Matron Grace Wilson,” on The Sunday Mail (Qld) on The Courier Mail website April 21, 2013 [Online] Cited 15/10/2019

Norman Stuckey (Australian, 1914-1983) 'The Pimple, Shaggy Ridge, New Guinea' 1943 from the exhibition 'Icon & archive: photography & the World Wars' at the Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, April - July, 2010

Norman Bradford Stuckey (Australian, 1914-1983)
The Pimple, Shaggy Ridge, New Guinea
1943
Toned silver gelatin print
Australian War Memorial

The Battle of the Shaggy Ridge was part of the Markham and Ramu Valley – Finisterre Range campaign, consisting of a number of actions fought by Australian and Japanese troops in Papua New Guinea in World War II. Following the Allied capture of Lae and Nadzab, the Australian 9th Division had been committed to a quick follow up action on the Huon Peninsula in an effort to cut off the withdrawing Japanese. Once the situation on the Huon Peninsula stabilised in late 1943, the 7th Division had pushed into the Markham and Ramu Valleys towards the Finisterre Range with a view to pushing north towards the coast around Bogadjim, where they would meet up with Allied forces advancing around the coast from the Huon Peninsula, before advancing towards Madang.

A series of minor engagements followed in the foothills of the Finisterre Range before the Australians came up against strong resistance centred around the Kankiryo Saddle and Shaggy Ridge, which consisted of several steep features, dotted with heavily defended rocky outcrops. After a preliminary assault on a forward position dubbed The Pimple in late December 1943, the Australians renewed their assault in mid-January 1944 and over the course of a fortnight eventually captured the Japanese positions on Shaggy Ridge and the Kankiryo Saddle, after launching a brigade-sized attack up three avenues of advance. In the aftermath, the Australians pursued the Japanese to the coast and subsequently took Madang, linking up with US and Australian forces.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 25/10/2019

Barbara Joan Isaacson (Australian, 1923-2017)
Journalist Iris Dexter standing under the starboard engine of a Douglas C-47 aircraft
February-March 1943
Gelatin silver print 2008
Image courtesy of the AMW

Joan Barbara Isaacson was born into a dynamic and family. Her mother, Lynka Isaacson (also known as Caroline Isaacson), was the first female journalist to be employed by a metropolitan newspaper in Australia, and was a strong role model for her daughter. After the war Isaacson’s mother and brother set up the Southern Cross publishing business.

Isaacson attended the Melbourne Technical College, where she studied photography. When she was 18 years old she joined the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS). Working in the Army Public Relations section, she travelled the east coast taking documentary and recruitment propaganda photographs and meeting press journalists and photographers.

In 1943 Isaacson married Richard L. Beck, a graphic designer and photographer. During the period from 1946-1948 they set up their own photographic business in Melbourne, specialising in child portraiture. Isaacson took over the business c.1950 when her husband went back to working as a graphic designer, and continued to manage the studio until the birth of her third baby. After her departure from the photography business Isaacson was involved in a variety of other ventures and gave up her photography.

Text from the Australian Women’s Register website [Online] Cited 24/10/2019

Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992) 'The dozing soldier' 1943

Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992)
The dozing soldier (Tired Soldier in Train North Queensland)
1943
Gelatin silver print
Australian War Memorial

Photographs are an inseparable part of our memory of the First and Second World Wars. They help us remember events which many of us have no direct experience.

Monash Gallery of Art’s new special exhibition Icon & archive: photography and the World Wars draws on the Australian War Memorial’s vast photographic collection to consider the relationship of photography and war. This extraordinary exhibition opens to the public on Friday 16 April.

Direct from the Australian War Memorial, Icon & archive demonstrates the powerful role played by photography in the efforts of Australians to make sense of and remember the terrible events of the First and the Second World Wars.

“Visitors to MGA will see many ‘iconic’ photographs that have become lodged in our national memory,” said MGA Director and curator of the exhibition, Dr Shaune Lakin.

“Icon & archive also presents previously unseen photographs to showcase the experiences of both service personnel and the families left behind during the wars. These photographs provide contemporary audiences with a remarkable picture of the effects of the World Wars on private, family and social life in Australia. In doing this, the exhibition will help members of our community better understand that experience and its relevance to contemporary Australia,” said Dr Lakin.

Icon & archive will play a significant role in the City of Monash’s Anzac Day commemorations, in this the 95th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Icon & archive includes some of the most historically significant pictures from Gallipoli, as well as other important sites involving Australians during both the First and the Second World Wars.”

Press release from the Monash Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 09/07/2022. No longer available online

Algemon Darge (Australian, 1878-1941)
Private George Beamish Swanton with his wife Nellie and their young baby Joan
1915
Gelatin silver print
Australian War Memorial

Studio portrait of 1159 Private (Pte) George Beamish Swanton, Australian 24th Battalion, of Werribee, Victoria, with his wife Nellie and young baby, Joan Helen. Pte Swanton enlisted on 28 April 1915 and embarked on board HMAT Euripides on 8 May 1915. He died of wounds on 28 July 1916 at Pozieres, France. Pte Swanton had two brothers who were also killed in action; 222 Pte John (Jack) Swanton, 2nd Battalion, enlisted on 27 August 1914 and was killed in action at Gallipoli Peninsula on 2 May 1915; and 2760 Pte Henry Swanton, 29th Battalion, enlisted on 5 March 1916 and was killed in action at Pozieres, France on 2 November 1916.

This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930’s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers’ notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.

Text from the Australian War Memorial website [Online] Cited 25/10/2019

Norman Bradford Stuckey (Australian, 1914-1983)
Engineers exhausted after destroying obstacles, Tarakan
1945
Gelatin silver print
Australian War Memorial

The Battle of Tarakan was the first stage in the Borneo campaign of 1945. It began with an amphibious landing by Allied forces on 1 May, code-named Operation Oboe One; the Allied ground forces were drawn mainly from the Australian 26th Brigade, but included a small element of Netherlands East Indies personnel. The main objective of the landing was capture of the island’s airfield. While the battle ended with success for the Allied forces over the Japanese defenders, this victory is generally regarded as having not justified its costs. The airfield was so heavily damaged that it ultimately could not be repaired in time to make it operational for other phases of the Allied campaign in Borneo.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 25/10/2019

Asti Studios. 'Studio portrait of an unidentified First World War soldier in Australian service uniform' 1914-1918

Asti Studios
Studio portrait of an unidentified First World War soldier in Australian service uniform, including greatcoat and slouch hat
c. 1914-1918
New South Wales, Sydney
Toned silver gelatin print
Australian War Memorial

Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill
Victoria 3150 Australia
Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500

Opening hours:
Tue – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun: 10am – 4pm
Mon/public holidays: closed

Monash Gallery of Art website

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Review: ‘Jill Orr: Vision’ at Jenny Port Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 2nd June – 3rd July, 2010

Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952)
Megan
2009

A huge gallery crawl on Wednesday last saw me take in exhibitions at Nellie Castan Gallery (Malleus Melficarum: strong sculptural work by James and Eleanor Avery; Broken Canon: vibrant mixed media collages by Marc Freeman); Anita Traverso Gallery (Peristereonas: sculptures, photographs and mixed media by Barry Thompson); John Buckley Gallery (Perpetua by Emma can Leest, beautiful cut paper works; rather mundane paintings by Christian Lock); Karen Woodbury Gallery (Every breath you take: wonderful galaxy-like paintings, perhaps as seen by the Hubble telescope, with a geometric / cellular base by Lara Merrett); The Centre for Contemporary Photography (Event horizon: a group exhibition that “engages the horizon as a means to establish a physical locality with relation to the Earth’s surface and more broadly to the universe of which it is a miniscule component.” An exhibition that left me rather cold); and ACCA (Towards an elegant solution by Peter Cripps, again a singularly unemotional engagement with the precise, contained work: interesting for how the work explores spatial environments but in an abstract, intellectual way).

The stand out work from this mammoth day was Jill Orr: Vision at Jenny Port Gallery. Simply put, it was the strongest, most direct, most emotionally powerful work that I saw all day.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Amelia Douglas and Jenny Port Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in this posting.

Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952)
Megan
2009

Jill Orr’s new participatory performances are photographs of children from Avoca Primary School painted with white clay from the area, displayed in pairs. The children are photographed once with eyes open, once with eyes closed. Orr asked the children to imagine their future life when they had their eyes closed. The key to the work is a group photograph of the ghostly children outside the primary school where everyone is isolated from each other (see photograph below).

“White faces loom up out of a dark ground, described by Orr as a void. On the surface these portraits are finely crafted, the skin of masked face becomes one with the digital file to create a facial landscape. The materiality of the face and the photographic file are exposed for the viewer. Titling the series ‘vision’ Orr ventures into a ‘haptic visuality’ where “vision itself can be tactile, as though one were touching a film with one’s eyes.”

From the catalogue essay by Professor Anne Marsh, Monash University

In the performance, the ritual of being photographed, Orr instructs the children who are placed under the surveillance of the camera. “We are confronted with the pose, the conscious composition of the image to be photographed, the inherent constructedness of the posed photograph.”1 The child assumes the pose by which they wish to be memorialised. The gaze (of the camera, of the viewer) is returned / or not in this spectacle.

Something happens when we look at these photographs. The text of the photographs becomes intertextual, producing as Barthes understands a “plurality of meanings and signifying / interpretive gestures that escape the reduction of knowledge to fixed, monological re-presentations, or presences.”2 This is because, as Foucault observes, texts “are caught up in a system of references to … other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network … Its unity is variable and relative.”3

The photographs invite us to share not only the mapping of the surface of the skin and the mapping of place (the history of white people living on the land in country Australia) and identity but the sharing of inner light, the light of the imaginary as well – and in this observation the images become unstable, open to reinterpretation. The distance between viewer and subject is transcended through an innate understanding of inner and outer light. The photographs seduce, meaning, literally, to be led astray.

As American photographer Minor White, who photographed in meditation hoping for a revelation in spirit though connection between person > subject > camera > negative > print, observes in one of his Three Canons

When the image mirrors the man
And the man mirrors the subject
Something might take over 4

Here the power of the photographer acting in isolation, the modernist tenet of authorship, is overthrown. In it’s place, “White supposes a relationship with subject that is a two way street: by granting the world some role in its own representation we create a photograph that is not so much a product solely of individual actions as it is the result of a negotiation in which the world and all its subjects might participate.”5 The autobiography of a soul born in the age of mechanical reproduction. This is the power of these photographs for something intangible within the viewer does take over. I found myself looking at the photographs again and again for small nuances, the detail of hairs on the head, the imagining of what the person was thinking about with their eyes closed: their future, their fears, their hopes, the ‘active imagination as a means to visualise sustainable futures’ (Orr, 2010).

These photographs seem to lengthen or protract time through this haptic touching of inner light. As Pablo Helguera observes in his excellent essay How To Understand the Light on a Landscape that examines different types of light (including experiental light, somber light, home light, ghost light, the light of the deathbed, protective light, artificial light, working light, Sunday light, used light, narrated light, the last light of day, hotel light, transparent light, after light, the light of the truly blind and the light of adolescence but not, strangely, inner light)

“Experience is triggered by light, but not exclusively by the visible light of the electro-magnetic spectrum. What the human eye is incapable to perceive is absorbed by other sensory parts of the body, which contribute to the perception that light causes an effect that goes beyond the merely visual …

There is the LIGHT OF ADOLESCENCE, a blinding light that is similar to the one we feel when we are asleep facing the sun and we feel its warmth but don’t see it directly. Sometimes it marks the unplace, perhaps the commonality of all places or perhaps, for those who are pessimists, the unplaceness of every location …

We may choose to openly embrace the darkness of light, and thus let ourselves through the great gates of placehood, where we can finally accept the unexplainable concreteness of our moments for what they are.”6

In the imagination of the darkness that lies behind these children’s closed eyes is the commonality of all places, a shared humanity of memory, of dreams. These photographs testify to our presence and ask us to decide how we feel about our life, our place and the relation to that (un)placeness where we must all, eventually, return.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Feiereisen, Florence and Pope, Daniel. “True Fiction and Fictional Truths: The Enigmatic in Sebald’s Use of Images in The Emigrants” in Patt, Lise (ed.,). Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald. Los Angeles: The Institute of Cultural Inquiry, 2007, p. 175.

2/ Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text” in Image, Music, Text. trans. S. Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977 quoted in Thumlert, Kurt. Intervisuality, Visual Culture, and Education. [Online] Cited 10/08/2006. www.forkbeds.com/visual-pedagogy.htm (link no longer active)

3/ Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973 quoted in Thumlert, Kurt. Intervisuality, Visual Culture, and Education. [Online] Cited 10/08/2006. www.forkbeds.com/visual-pedagogy.htm (link no longer active)

4/ White, Minor. Mirrors, Messages and Manifestations. Aperture, 1969

5/ Leo, Vince. Review of Mirrors, Messages and Manifestations on the Amazon website [Online] Cited 26/06/2010

6/ Helguera, Pablo. “How to Understand the Light on a Landscape,” in Patt, Lise (ed.,). Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald. Los Angeles: The Institute of Cultural Inquiry, 2007, pp. 110-119

Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952)
Jacinta
2009

Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952)
Avoca Primary School
2009

Jill Orr’s work centres on issues of the psycho-social and environmental where she draws on land and identities. Grappling with the balance and discord that exists between the human spirit, art and nature, Orr has, since the 1970s, delighted, shocked and moved audiences through her performance installations.

This current body of work involved children from the Avoca Primary School as active participants in Orr’s performance for the camera. The result is a series of high contrast black and white photographic portraits, which are shown as diptychs portraying the different states of seeing both outwardly and inwardly. One of each pair frames the child looking directly at the camera. The gaze meets the viewer. Who is looking at whom? The second captures the child whose eyes are closed. An inner world is intimated, but not accessible to the viewer.

In terms of the ‘gaze’, these works turn to the child as conveyer of the imaginary engaging both within and without. “I have found that creative acts require the visionary sensibilities of both the inner and outer world to operate simultaneously, consciously and unconsciously as dual aspects of the one action. In this instance the action is that of active imagination as a means to visualise sustainable futures.” (Jill Orr, 2010). The portraits also reflect the present relationship to place that is etched into the faces of youth as already kissed by the harsh Australian sun.

Avoca is one of many townships that has been socially, economically and environmentally affected by drought and climate change. The portraits are created against this background.

Text from the Jenny Port Gallery website [Online] Cited 26/06/2010 no longer available online

Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952) 'Vision' installation photograph at Jenny Port Gallery

Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952)
Vision installation photographs at Jenny Port Gallery
June 2010
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Jenny Port Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

Jill Orr website

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Text: Marcus Bunyan. ‘Missing in Action (dark kenosis)’ 2010

June 2010

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.

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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.

Marcus Bunyan website

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Exhibition: ‘European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century’, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 19th June – 10th October 2010

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.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Dr Ted Gott, Senior Curator of International Art, Sue Coffey and all the media team and the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to photograph the exhibition and publish the photographs online. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria.

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 view 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

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 from the exhibition 'European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century', Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria, June - October, 2010

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 'European Masters: Städel Museum 19th - 20th Century', Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria

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 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' 1879 (installation view) from the exhibition 'European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century', Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria, June - October, 2010

Alfred Sisley (English, 1839-1899)
Banks of the Seine in Autumn (installation view)
1879
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view 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, June - October, 2010

Installation view of Charles-Francois Daubigny (French 1817-1878) 'French Orchard at Harvest Time' (Le verger) 1876

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) 1876 (installation view) from the exhibition 'European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century', Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria, June - October, 2010

Charles-Francois Daubigny (French, 1817-1878)
French Orchard at Harvest Time (Le verger) (installation view)
1876
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French 1841-1919) 'After the luncheon' (La fin du déjeuner) 1879 (installation view) at the exhibition 'European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century', Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria, June - October, 2010

Installation views of Pierre Auguste Renoir (French 1841-1919) After the luncheon (La fin du déjeuner) 1879 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Pierre Auguste Renoir (French 1841-1919)
After the luncheon (La fin du déjeuner)
1879
Oil on canvas
100.5 x 81.3cm
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main
Acquired in 1910

Odilon Redon (French 1840-1916) 'Christ and the Samaritan Woman' (Le Christ et la Samaritaine) c. 1895 (installation view) at the exhibition 'European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century', Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria

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.”

The exhibition opens with a series of large-scale romantic German paintings, including Johann H.W. Tischbein’s iconic Goethe in the Roman Campagna from 1787. Visitors will also be treated to magnificent examples of 19th century French art from Corot and Courbet’s Realist landscapes to well-known beautiful Impressionist works by Monet, Renoir, Degas and Cézanne.

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.

The Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series began in 2004 with The Impressionists: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, continued in 2005 with Dutch Masters from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, followed by Picasso in 2006, Guggenheim Collection: 1940s to Now in 2007, Art Deco 1910-1939 in 2008 and Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire in 2009.

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.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website

Installation view 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

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

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. 'Female dancer' (Tanzerin) c. 1935 (installation view)

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

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Review: ‘Cloud’ by Guan Wei at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 1st June – 29th June, 2010

Guan Wei (China, b. 1957)
Buddha’s hand
2010

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

“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 from the exhibition 'Cloud' by Guan Wei at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne, June 2010

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

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

Arc One Gallery website

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘Missing in action (dark kenosis)’ 2010

May 2010

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

Detail of images

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.76' 2010 (detail)

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.78' 2010 (detail)

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.6' 2010 (detail)

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) 'Missing in Action (dark kenosis) No.9' 2010 (detail)

Detail of images 76, 78, 6 and 9

Marcus Bunyan website

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Exhibition: ‘Birthmark’ by Owen Leong at Anna Pappas Gallery, Prahran

Exhibition dates: 13th May – 5th June, 2010

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 from the exhibition 'Birthmark' by Owen Leong at Anna Pappas Gallery, Prahran, May - June, 2010

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 from the exhibition 'Birthmark' by Owen Leong at Anna Pappas Gallery, Prahran, May - June, 2010

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

Anna Pappas Gallery

Open by appointment only
Phone: +613 9521 7300

Anna Pappas Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘The Navigators’ at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 5th May – 29th May 2010

Artists: Lionel Bawden, Penny Byrne, Nicholas Folland, Locust Jones, Rhys Lee, Rob McHaffie, Derek O’Connor, Alex Spremberg, Madonna Staunton

Lionel Bawden (Sydney, b. 1974) 'formless worlds move through me' 2010 from the exhibition 'The Navigators' at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne, May 2010

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 1950) 'Inside skins' 2002 from the exhibition 'The Navigators' at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne, May 2010

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 from the exhibition 'The Navigators' at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Melbourne, May 2010

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

Karen Woodbury Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

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Vale Mari Funaki

May 2010

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

Gallery Funaki website

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Monash Gallery of Art Bowness Photography Prize Call For Entries! Closes 30th June 2010

May 2010

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

Monash Gallery of Art website

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