Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959) Jim 2010 From the series Leak C Type photograph Large image size 110 x 238cm Framed size 127 x 255cm Edition of 8
You have just got to love these!
A wonderful suite of five panoramic photographs, framed in white, inhabit the beautiful space of Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. The photographs, different angles of the same bleached bone inverted skeleton of a house that was constructed by five builders in the Australian landscape around Cooma, New South Wales (no Photoshop tricks here!) have a subdued colour palette of misty greys and greens – all except one that has a vibrant blue sky with clouds, a man with his sheep dogs and a flock of sheep. Two of the photographs are framed upside down, one photograph a closer study from the same angle.
The house on the hill is surrounded by wondrous light gently highlighting the wooden bones of the building embedded into the landscape in a context that is soon to become another suburban housing estate. The skeleton rises up (and falls into the sky) like a foundering ship amongst mysterious gum trees, surrounded by broken stumps and littered branches. The best photograph (top, below) has the effect of the bones being lit up like a giant puzzle.
Examining ‘the encroachment of suburban development and the socio-economic and environmental pressures on the Australian landscape’ these photographs, named after the characters from Patrick White’s novel The Twyborn Affair, are ecologically aware and politically astute, as well as being fine photographs. The title of the exhibition, leak, perfectly sums up the osmotic nature of the encroachment of human habitation upon the ‘natural’ environment, which is already a mediated landscape due to European farming techniques and clearance of the landscape. But this is not a one way discourse; what do we call the ‘new’ Australian bush? What if the humpy invaded suburbia and pushed back the tide?
I would love to see different types of houses in different contexts. I want to see more these are so good!
Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959) Prowse 2010 From the series Leak C Type photograph Large image size 110 x 247cm Framed size 127 x 264cm Edition of 8
Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959) Aristide 2010 From the series Leak C Type photograph 60 x 122cm Edition of 8
Rosemary Laing (Australian, b. 1959) Eddie 2010 From the series Leak Type C photograph Framed 127.0 x 274.6cm Edition of 8
Tolarno Galleries Level 4 104 Exhibition Street Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia Phone: 61 3 9654 6000
Exhibition dates: 20th November 2010 – 6th March 2011
Many thankx to the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Space does not exist, it has to be created… Every sculpture based on the assumption that space exists is wrong; there is only the illusion of space.”
Alberto Giacometti, Notes, circa 1949
For the first time in 12 years, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg is presenting a comprehensive overview of Alberto Giacometti’s mature work in Germany. Around 60 sculptures will be displayed alongside more than 30 paintings and several drawings in the circa 2000 square meter exhibition space. The exhibition offers unique insights into the fascinating oeuvre of one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.
Giacometti’s vision of situating his figures within their own space and temporality will be realised for the first time in Wolfsburg as the exhibition architecture has been specially designed and constructed around the sculptures on display. Each of the carefully chosen works is provided with the space it requires to unfurl its true strengths. The exhibition clearly demonstrates the continued relevance of the work of Giacometti, who died in 1966, and its lasting influence on subsequent generations of artists. With his completely new conception of the human figure in relation to space and time, Giacometti can literally be considered – and this is one of the exhibition’s key theses – the inventor of virtual space.
Organised in cooperation with the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, the exhibition juxtaposes major works from Giacometti’s oeuvre with selected pieces from private collections and the artist’s estate. The works on show in Wolfsburg are drawn in large part from the estate holdings of the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation in Paris; this is the first time they have been presented on this scale in Germany. The display also includes important loans from the Alberto Giacometti Foundation in Zurich, as well as works from leading museums and private collections in Europe and the United States.
Press release from the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg website
Exhibition dates: 27th November 2010 – 6th March 2011
Curators: Götz Adriani and Patricia Kamp
Installation photograph of the exhibition Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny realities at Museum Frieder Burda
A great double act!
An inspired curatorial choice brings the work of these two artist’s together – life-like sculptures of everyday Americans mixing with theatrical, deadpan staged images. The mis en scène created in the exhibition space, the tension between sculpture, photograph, frame and space – is delicious.
Crewdson is at his best when he resists the obvious narrative (for example, all the traffic lights stuck on yellow in the photograph Untitled (Brief Encounter) (2006, see below). Personally I prefer his staged photographs with pairs or groups of people within the image, rather than a single figure. The storyline is more ambiguous and the photographs of people walking along railway tracks always remind me of the Stephen King story filmed as Stand by Me (1986) with a young River Phoenix. Either way they are intoxicating, the viewer drawn into these wonderful, dark psychological dramas.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Museum Frieder Burda for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation photograph of the exhibition Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny realities at Museum Frieder Burda with Duane Hanson Old Couple on a Bench (1994) in the foreground and Gregory Crewdson Untitled (Worthington Street) (2006) in the background
The works by the two American artists Duane Hanson (1925-1996) and Gregory Crewdson (born in 1962) confuse and touch the observer.
Both artists present people in their everyday lives, with hopes, yearnings and broken dreams. People we usually do not notice, aged and marked by reality, by life itself. While Hanson shapes his life-sized figures with a great deal of sympathy, Crewdson rather spreads a gloomy and depressing atmosphere in his pictures of lonely people in their houses, gardens and in streets.
With his realistic sculptures, the American artist Duane Hanson has become a synonym for contemporary realism in contemporary art. Typical motives are average people like housewives, waitresses, car dealers, janitors. Posture and expression of these figures are very close to reality. The photographer Gregory Crewdson arranges his large format pictures with cineastic arrangements and lets the abyss behind every-day life scenes become visible.
The exhibition at the Frieder Burda Museum presents about 30 figures by Duane Hanson, mainly from the artist’s estate, in dialogue with 20 large format works from the series Beneath the Roses by the photographer Gregory Crewdson. The photographies are mainly owned by the artist himself.
The curators Götz Adriani and Patricia Kamp are not aiming at a direct confrontation. They are rather presenting two artists who work with different materials, but deal with very similar topics. Both artists, Hanson and Crewdson, are grand when it comes to arranging their art. Crewdson always puts very much effort into the arrangements of the scenes in his pictures, and Hanson always keeps an eye on his close surroundings.
The works of both artists impressively reflect the complexity of the human existence. …
Duane Hanson (1925-1996) is one of the most influential American sculptors of the 20th century committed to Realism.
The proximity to reality of his lifelike, detailed human figures make for perfect irritation. Despite all the seriousness hidden behind the socio-critical issue, which prompted Hanson to create his protagonists, the figures have a great deal of entertainment value, above all – and it is precisely this that makes them so appealing – due to their occasional gravitational bearing. Featuring twenty-five works, the exhibition presents a representative cross-section of the American’s extensive oeuvre, which comprises a total of only 114 works. The figures enter a dialogue with the large-format photographs by the American photo artist Gregory Crewdson, who has a flair for relating human abysses in a different and very subtle way.
In the early 1950s, after completing his study of sculpture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Hanson was initially guided by the abstract style of art that prevailed during this period. However, this would not lead to a satisfactory result. In 1953, he turned his back on his homeland and spent nearly ten years of his life earning a living as an art teacher at American schools in Germany. It was during this period that he discovered the materials polyester resin and fibreglass, which would become crucial for his future creative work. After returning to the United States, Hanson spent the ensuing years perfecting his artistic skills in the treatment of these materials in such a way that the boundaries between reality and artificial figure seem to blur – where Hanson was never concerned with the mere illusionistic reproduction of reality, but chose this veristic manner of representation as a medium for communicating his concern in terms of content, i.e., shedding light on the tragedy of human lives that hauntingly consolidates in his characters.
In the human figures produced in the early work phase in the late 1960s, Hanson responded to the sociopolitical tension and protest movements of the day. He created sculptures and ensembles that very directly take issue with social hardship, violence, or racism, and he took a stand for the victims of this system, for the people who never had a chance to successfully face the demands made by life.
Influenced by Pop Art, Hanson turned to thematising everyday American life, frequently switching his observations to a critically satirical attitude that was, however, always guided by compassion. Housewives, construction workers, car salesmen, or janitors – the models for his figures are people in the American middle and working classes in whose biographies the disappointment in the American dream has become entrenched. He often puts his people and all of their small insufficiencies into perspective with ironic kindness, such as, for example, the Tourists, in whom are combined all of the clichés associated with the typical Florida tourist.
Hanson’s participation in documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 gave rise to his international breakthrough. His figures became more lifelike; they more and more naturally blended into their surroundings. Their gestures, facial expressions, and postures related the emotional and physical burdens of life. The artist concentrated on older people in whose physiognomies one can read the traces of existence, the impact of loneliness, the problems that accompany being old, and their alienation. Hanson was struck by the isolation of this generation by society, a circumstance that has not lost any of its relevance.
Hanson’s interest in rendering the figures as lifelike as possible is surely not rooted in a desire to want to convince the viewer of their “authenticity”; rather, their lifelikeness was meant to move the viewer to experience empathy and concern, thus manifesting Hanson’s humanism. Human values and destinies comprise the focus of his art; he transforms the reality of life into the realism of art and in doing so sharpens our outlook and our view of the world, our fellow human beings, and our own life as well.
Born in 1962 in Brooklyn, New York, Gregory Crewdson is one of the best-known contemporary photographers internationally. In his most important series to date Beneath the Roses, which he created between 2003 and 2008, Crewdson explores the American psyche and the disturbing realities at play within quotidian environments. In his dramatically detailed and realistic photographs situated in America’s morbid, small-town milieu, the artist succeeds to stimulate the viewer’s subconscious on various levels. Twenty outstanding works from the series are being placed in a dialogue with sculptures by Duane Hanson. Gregory Crewdson does not spare either effort or expenses for the production of his visual inventions, which are reminiscent of film productions. The stagings are planned and arranged in advance down to the smallest detail and then elaborately implemented in a major logistical and human effort. The final photograph is the result of what is frequently work lasting several weeks, a circumstance that is substantiated by its depths in terms of content and its technical perfection.
Gregory Crewdson works in two distinct ways to create his photographs. On one hand, he works on location in real neighborhoods and townships. On the other hand, the artist works on the soundstage inventing his world from scratch. Before the photographic location productions start, Crewdson drives around upstate Massachusetts looking for interesting settings, which he then has prepared in an elaborate process. In most cases, local residents of the ramshackle towns also play the characters in his work. Crewdson works closely with the art department of the museum MASSMoCA, when shooting his pictures done on the soundstage. The results are much like stills from a movie and reflect his affinity with cinema. Filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, or Steven Spielberg are the inspiration for Crewdson’s uncanny stories, which he seems to freeze in a single snapshot in time.
The construction of this narrative instant demonstrates the artist’s extraordinary talent. Like sophisticated literature does the reader, his works pose a challenge to viewers, as they have to mount the decisive share of the creative effort themselves. A brief, fleeting glance is not enough. Viewers become immersed in the staged scenes full of details and accessories to experience a moment that is intensely real. Fantasy and the powers of imagination and association fashion the visual event in the mind to become a subjective, alternative reality – an uncanny reality.
In his photographs, Crewdson deliberately works with emotions and fears that extend through his oeuvre in recurring, in part very different scenarios. They mirror alienation, absence, shame, sexuality, and loss – human states of emotion that deeply touch the viewer. That the artist focuses on the mind in his works may be due to the fact that, as the son of a psychoanalyst, he experienced insight into the profundity of the human soul very early on. His works can be regarded as metaphors for fears and desires, for the things that take place below the surface, the palpable, as if Crewdson wanted to make visible a new or different level of reality situated somewhere between the conscious and subconscious.
At the same time, the Beneath the Roses series can be seen as a psychological study of the American province. The settings show social realities and document the economic decline of a society behind the backdrop of the American way of life. Unsentimental and direct, they reflect working-class life – which allows us to strike an arc to the work by Duane Hanson, whose oeuvre also revolves around the concept of humanity, the facets of which he lends expression to in his silent, introverted figures.
The evolution of Beneath the Roses was documented in a series of production stills, original drawings by the artist, and detailed lighting plans. About sixty works from this reservoir are presented in a studio exhibition at the museum in order to illustrate the complex technical process of producing the photographs. Gregory Crewdson completed his study of Street Photography at the Yale School of Art in New Haven in 1988. He returned to Yale in 1993 and has occupied the Chair of Photography since.
Press release from the Museum Frieder Burda website
Richard Nicholson (British, b. 1968) Peter Guest darkroom 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker
I started my life as an artist as a black and white photographer. I spent many hours ensconced in the enveloping black and red safety light of the darkroom, listening to the sound of running water – a nurturing, womb-like environment despite the toxic nature of the chemicals involved. It was magical to see the image appear in the developing tray out of nothing, an alchemical process that never ceased to amaze me, a link to the early days of photography and the wonder that those first images would have generated. At that time the photography course at Phillip Institute (soon to become part of RMIT University) had 3 huge darkrooms; now they have one with only a couple of enlargers.
Working in those darkrooms did teach you a solid foundation for your art practice: for one thing, the value of developing a working methodology – choosing a good negative that you wanted to print, spending time with it, adjusting the enlarger to obtain optimum size and printing it beautifully – for in a good day I could only print one or possibly two negatives a day. Then there was the process of washing the chemicals out of the paper and drying the prints. The whole process taught you patience, precision and dedication to the task at hand so that the negative revealed in the print something else that might be present, some ‘other’ that photography has the ability to capture if you take time, are aware and receptive to this illumination. These disciplines have held me in good stead during the following years.
I still love analogue colour and black and white photographs. To me it is like the difference between an LP and a CD. The CD might have it all over the LP in terms of information captured but there is this ineffable feeling about an LP with it’s scratches and pops, it’s atmosphere. The same goes for an analogue print and it is something that you can’t quite put your finger on. I believe that there is still a place for analogue prints in the world – for the magical process, for their beauty, sensitivity and downright inspiration. Long may they live.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to The Riflemaker Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Richard Nicholson (British, b. 1968) Roy Bass darkroom, Michael Dyer Associates, Covent Garden 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker
The End of Professional Photographic Darkrooms and Music Recording Studios
The impact of digital technology on print photography and music production is the subject of ANALOG at Riflemaker, Soho from 10 January 2011. The exhibition invites us inside the last of London’s photographic darkrooms as well as taking a visit to a working reel-to-reel music studio, courtesy of an installation by Lewis Durham of the band Kitty, Daisy & Lewis.
Richard Nicholson. “A Survey of London’s Remaining Professional Darkrooms 2006-2010”
1979. The year my father constructed a darkroom and introduced me to photography. I was immediately entranced by the printing process and cherished the long hours spent in this dark, private space; standing in the gloom of the red safelight, slowly rocking the print tray, watching the ghost-like image reveal itself through the gently lapping developer solution. As I experimented with the many formulas and techniques detailed in my father’s guidebooks, I often found the most interesting prints were the chemically stained accidents pulled from the bin at the end of a session. The darkroom became a bolt-hole for me; a private space where I could escape from the noise of family life. As I passed through school, university and various jobs, I often sought out a darkroom to escape from the crowd. But as I honed my skills – solarising, masking, bleaching, split-toning, hand-colouring – my prints began to attract public attention.
2006. I’m working in London as a photographer. I’m still shooting film, but digital is becoming ubiquitous. The photographic manufacturer Durst announces that it will no longer be producing enlargers. Annual sales have dropped from a peak of 107,000 units in 1979 to just a few hundred units in recent years. The darkroom has always been integral to my practice as a photographer. But for how much longer? Once bustling hire darkrooms have become eerily quiet, and London labs are dropping like flies. Joe’s Basement, Primary, Metro Soho, Keishi Colour, Ceta, Team Photographic, Sky – all gone. Polaroid has stopped making instant film and Kodak and Fuji are discontinuing one emulsion after another. The recently introduced Canon 5d camera has persuaded many diehard film photographers that digital is the future, and those who remain unconvinced are facing clients who no longer have the budgets for film, Polaroids, clip-tests, contact-sheets and prints. The darkroom’s days are numbered.
Against this backdrop, I begin to look at the darkroom in a new light. My enlarger (a handsomely engineered GeM 504) has been an invisible tool, but now it presents itself as a sad and lumpen creature in the face of extinction. With its long neck, heavy head and inviting focus handles, the thing has a human form which elicits sympathy – the surrounding matt black walls add an air of theatricality. Hearing tales of noble machines being unceremoniously dumped in skips when labs close down, I decide to document them before they all disappear.
I chose to photograph professional darkrooms because they are often shrouded in mystery; hidden behind the tidy glass facade of the lab’s front desk. As a keen printer myself, I was curious to see the workspaces of the master printers; craftsmen who had spent their working lives in darkness. The spaces I discovered were often haphazard and brimming with personal details; coffee cups, CD collections, family snapshots, unpaid invoices, curious knick-knacks brought back by globe-trotting photographers. These human elements transformed what might have been a detached typology of modernist industrial design into something more intimate and nuanced.
I photographed each darkroom on large format film. Working in total darkness, I carefully painted these normally dingy spaces with a flashgun, seeking to reveal the beauty of the machinery, and shed some light on the clutter stained with the patina of time. Some of the darkrooms were busy, whilst others were neglected (all attention being given to the new inkjet printer in the adjoining corridor). Many of the darkrooms were facing imminent closure. (The one with the slogan pinned to the wall, ‘I want to stay here forever’, was dismantled the day after I photographed it and is currently being converted into luxury apartments.)
Many of the iconic images of recent decades were crafted in these rooms. Mike Spry’s high contrast lith prints of U2 and Depeche Mode for music photographer Anton Corbijn, Peter Guest’s black and white prints of the Trainspotting cast for portrait photographer Lorenzo Agius, or Brian Dowling’s intricately masked colour prints for fashion photographer Nick Knight. Such commercial work is now routinely carried out in Photoshop and professional printers have had to seek out new avenues for their skills. The art market is perhaps the last bastion for traditional darkroom printing, but even this area is being taken over by digital machines – Lightjet, Lambda, and Chromira printers. But suddenly there is a resurgence of interest in analog processes amongst younger photographers who were brought up on digital. Left cold by the clinical nature of the virtual workspace, they seek depth and authenticity via the chemical ambience of the traditional darkroom. Alternative processes from the early history of photography are being rediscovered, Polaroid instant film has been relaunched, and the craze for poorly engineered Russian and Chinese film cameras (Lomo, Holga, Diana etc) continues unabated.
I wonder at this enthusiasm. Like many committed film photographers, I experienced a belated epiphany when I finally switched to digital. My darkroom skills were easily transferred to the digital realm, and I soon discovered that Photoshop offered creative printmaking possibilities that far exceeded what I could achieve in the darkroom. Whilst I don’t miss the chemistry of the darkroom – much of it highly toxic – I do miss the aura of the red safelight and the soothing sound of running water. I miss the excited sense of performance when making a complicated print (there’s no ‘undo’ button in the darkroom), and the physicality of dodging and burning – the manual shaping of the light. With film I had a network of contacts across London and felt embedded in the city, whereas with digital I feel disembodied. The history of photography is young and fast moving. The darkroom era was short lived. This collection of images represents its apotheosis.”
Richard Nicholson, November 2010
I would like to thank all the printers who kindly allowed me to photograph their darkrooms.
Nicholson, Richard. “A Survey of London’s Remaining Professional Darkrooms 2006-2010,” in Taylor, Tot (ed.,). ANALOG: trends in sound and picture book. London: Riflemaker, 2011, pp. 17-19. ISBN 978-0-9563571-6-8.
Richard Nicholson (British, b. 1968) Roy Snell darkroom, Earlsfield 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker
Richard Nicholson (British, b. 1968) Gordon Bishop Associates, Paddington Street 2006 Courtesy of the artist and Riflemaker
The Riflemaker Gallery 79 Beak Street, Regent Street, London W1
It is with much sadness that I note the death of respected Australian photographer and teacher Dr John Cato (1926-2011). Son of Australian photographer Jack Cato, who wrote one of the first histories of Australian photography (The Story of the Camera in Australia (1955)), John was apprentice to his father before setting up a commercial studio with Athol Shmith that ran from 1950-1971. Dr Cato then joined Shmith at the fledgling Prahran College of Advanced Education photography course in 1974, becoming head of the course when Shmith retired in 1979, a position he held until John retired in 1991.
I was fortunate enough to get to know John and his vivacious wife Dawn. I worked with him and co-curatored his retrospective with William Heimerman, ‘…and his forms were without number’ at The Photographers’ Gallery, South Yarra, in 2002. My catalogue essay from this exhibition is reproduced below.
John was always generous with his time and advice. His photographs are sensitive, lyrical renditions of the Australian landscape. He had a wonderful ear for the land and for the word, a musical lyricism that was unusual in Australian photographers of the early 1970s. He understood how a person from European background could have connection to this land, this Australia, without being afraid to express this sense of belonging; he also imaged an Aboriginal philosophy (that all spirits have a physical presence and everything physical has a spiritual presence) tapping into one of the major themes of his personal work: the mirror held up to reveal an’other’ world – the language of ambiguity and ambivalence (the dichotomy of opposites e.g. black / white, masculine / feminine) speaking through the photographic print.
His contribution to the art of photography in Australia is outstanding. What are the precedents for a visual essay in Australian photography before John Cato? I ask the reader to consider this question.
It would be fantastic if the National Gallery of Victoria could organise a large exhibition and publication of his work, gathering photographs from collections across the land, much like the successful retrospective of the work of John Davis held in 2010. Cato’s work needs a greater appreciation throughout Australia because of it’s seminal nature, containing as it does the seeds of later development for Australian photographers. His educational contribution to the development of photography as an art form within Australia should also be acknowledged in separate essays for his influence was immense. His life, his teaching and his work deserves nothing less.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
‘… and his forms were without number’
John Cato: A Retrospective of the Photographic Work 1971-1991
This writing on the photographic work of Dr John Cato from 1971-1991 is the catalogue essay to a retrospective of his work held at The Photographers’ Gallery in Prahran, Melbourne in 2002. Dr Cato forged his voice as a photographic artist in the early 1970s when photography was just starting to be taken seriously as an art form in Australia. He was a pioneer in the field, and became an educator in art photography. He is respected as one of Australia’s preeminent photographers of the last century.
With the arrival of ‘The New Photography’1 from Europe in the early 1930’s, the formalist style of Modernism was increasingly adopted by photographers who sought to express through photography the new spirit of the age. In the formal construction of the images, the abstract geometry, the unusual camera angles and the use of strong lighting, the representation ‘of the thing in itself’2 was of prime importance. Subject matter often emphasised the monumentality of the factory, machine or body/landscape. The connection of the photographer with the object photographed was usually one of sensitivity and awareness to an external relationship that resulted in a formalist beauty.
Following the upheaval and devastation of the Second World War, photography in Australia was influenced by the ‘Documentary’ style. This “came to be understood as involved chiefly with creating aesthetic experiences … associated with investigation of the social and political environment.”3 This new movement of social realism, “… a human record intimately bound with a moment of perception,”4 was not dissimilar to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’ (images a la sauvette) where existence and essence are in balance.5
The culmination of the ‘Documentary’ style of photography was The Family of Man exhibition curated by Edward Steichen that toured Australia in 1959.6 This exhibition, seen many times by John Cato,7 had a theme of optimism in the unity and dignity of man. The structure of the images in ‘Documentary’ photography echoed those of the earlier ‘New Photography’.
Max Dupain “stressed the objective, impersonal and scientific character of the camera; the photographer could reveal truth by his prerogative of selection.”8 This may have been an objective truth, an external vocalising of a vision that concerned itself more with exterior influences rather than an internal meditation upon the subject matter.
John Cato (Australian, 1926-2011) Untitled from the series Essay I, Landscapes in a Figure 1971-1979 Silver gelatin photograph
In 1971, John Cato’s personal photographic work was exhibited for the first time as part of the group show Frontiers at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.9 Earth Song emerged into an environment of social upheaval inflamed by Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. It provided a group of enthusiastic people who were beginning to be interested in photography as art, an opportunity to see the world, and photography, through a different lens. The 52 colour photographic prints in Earth Song, were shown in a sequence that used melodic line and symphonic form as its metaphoric basis, standing both as individual photographs and as part of a total concept.10
In the intensity of the holistic vision, in the connection to the subconscious, the images elucidate the photographers’ search for a perception of the world. This involved an attainment of a receptive state that allowed the cracks, creases and angles inherent in the blank slate of creation to become meaningful. The sequence contained images that can be seen as ‘acts of revelation’,11confirmed and expanded by supporting photographs, and they unearthed a new vocabulary for the discussion of spiritual and political issues by the viewer. They may be seen as a metaphor for life.
The use of sequence, internal meditation and ‘revelation’, although not revolutionary in world terms,12 were perhaps unique in the history of Australian photography at that time. During the production of Earth Song, John Cato was still running a commercial studio in partnership with the photographer Athol Shmith and much of his early personal work was undertaken during holidays and spare time away from the studio. Eventually he abandoned being a commercial photographer in favour of a new career as an educator, but found this left him with even less time to pursue his personal work.13
Earth Song (1970-1971) was followed by the black and white sequences:
Tree – A Journey
18 images
1971-1973
Petroglyphs
14 images
1971-1973
Seawind
14 images
1971-1975
Proteus
18 images
1974-1977
Waterway
16 images
1974-1979
Together they form the extensive series Essay I, Landscapes in a Figure, parts of which are held in the permanent photography collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.14
John Cato (Australian, 1926-2011) Untitled from the series Essay I, Landscapes in a Figure 1971-1979 Silver gelatin photograph
The inspiration for Essay I and later personal work came from many sources. An indebtedness to his father, the photographer Jack Cato, is gratefully acknowledged. Cato also acknowledges the influence of literature: William Shakespeare (especially the Sonnets, and As You Like It), William Blake, Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass), Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass), the Bible; and of music (symphonic form), the mythology of the Dreamtime and Aboriginal rock paintings.15 Each body of work in Essay I was based on an expression of nature, the elements and the Creation. They can be seen as Equivalents16 of his most profound life experiences, his life philosophy illuminated in physical form.
John Cato was able to develop the vocabulary of his own inner landscape while leaving the interpretation of this landscape open to the imagination of the viewer. Seeing himself as a photographer rather than an artist, he used the camera as a tool to mediate between what he saw in his mind’s eye, the subjects he photographed and the surface of the photographic negative.17 Photographing ‘in attention’, much as recommended by the teacher and philosopher Krishnamurti,18 he hoped for a circular connection between the photographer and the subject photographed. He then looked for verification of this connection in the negative and, eventually, in the final print.
Essay II, Figures in a Landscape, had already been started before the completion of Essay I and it consists of three black and white sequences:
Alcheringa
11 images
1978-1981
Broken Spears
11 images
1978-1983
Mantracks
22 images in pairs
1978-1983
The photographs in Essay II seem to express “the sublimation of Aboriginal culture by Europeans”19 and, as such, are of a more political nature. Although this is not obvious in the photographs of Alcheringa, the images in this sequence celebrating the duality of reality and reflection, substance and shadow, it is more insistent in the symbology of Broken Spears and Mantracks. Using the metaphor of the fence post (white man / black man in Broken Spears) and contrasting Aboriginal and European ‘sacred’ sites (in pairs of images in Mantracks), John Cato comments on the destruction of a culture and spirit that had existed for thousands of years living in harmony with the land.
In his imaging of an Aboriginal philosophy (that all spirits have a physical presence and everything physical has a spiritual presence) he again tapped one of the major themes of his personal work: the mirror held up to reveal an’other’ world. Cato saw that even as they are part of the whole, the duality of positive / negative, black / white, masculine / feminine are always in conflict.20 In the exploration of the conceptual richness buried within the dichotomy of opposites, Cato sought to enunciate the language of ambiguity and ambivalence,21 speaking through the photographic print.
The theme of duality was further expanded in his last main body of work, Double Concerto: An Essay in Fiction:
Double Concerto (Pat Noone)
30 images
1984-1990
Double Concerto (Chris Noone)
19 images
1985-1991
Double Concerto may be seen as a critique of the power of witness and John Cato created two ‘other’ personas, Pat Noone and Chris Noone, to visualise alternative conditions within himself. The Essay explored the idea that if you send two people to the same location they will take photographs that are completely different from each other, that tell a distinct story about the location and their self:
“For the truth of the matter is that people have mixed feelings and confused opinions and are subject to contradictory expectations and outcomes, in every sphere of experience.”22
This slightly schizophrenic confusion between the two witnesses is further highlighted by Pat Noone using single black and white images in sequence. Chris Noone, on the other hand, uses multiple colour images joined together to form panoramic landscapes that feature two opposing horizons. The use of colour imagery in Double Concerto, with its link to the colour work of Earth Song, can be seen to mark the closing of the circle in terms of John Cato’s personal work. In Another Way of Telling, John Berger states that …
“Photography, unlike drawing, does not possess a language. The photographic image is produced instantaneously by the reflection of light; its figuration is not impregnated by experience or consciousness.”23
But in the personal work of John Cato it is a reflection of the psyche, not of light, that allows a consciousness to be present in the figuration of the photographic prints. The personal work is an expression of his self, his experience, his story and t(his) language, is our language, if we allow our imagination to speak.
Dr Marcus Bunyan 2002
Footnotes
1/ Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Sydney: Australian National Gallery, William Collins, 1988, p. 109
2/ Newton, Gael. Max Dupain. Sydney: David Ell Press,1980, p. 34
3/ Ibid., p. 32
4/ Greenough, Sarah (et al). On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography. Boston: National Gallery of Art, Bullfinch Press, 1989, p. 256
5/ Ibid., p. 256
6/ Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Sydney: Australian National Gallery, William Collins, 1988, p. 131
7/ Ibid., p. 131
8/ Newton, Gael. Max Dupain. Sydney: David Ell Press, 1980, p. 32
9/ Only the second exhibition by Australian photographers at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
10/ Shmith, Athol. Light Vision No.1. Melbourne: Jean-Marc Le Pechoux (editor and publisher), Sept 1977, p. 21
11/ Berger, John and Mohr, Jean. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982, p. 118
12/ Hall, James Baker. Minor White: Rites and Passages. New York: Aperture, 1978
13/ Conversation with the photographer 29/01/1997, Melbourne, Victoria
14/ Newton, Gael. Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988. Sydney: Australian National Gallery, William Collins, 1988, p. 135, Footnote 7; p. 149
15/ Conversation with the photographer 22/01/1997, Melbourne, Victoria
16/ Norman, Dorothy. Alfred Stieglitz. New York: Aperture, 1976, p. 5
17/ Ibid.,
18/ Krishnamurti. Beginnings of Learning. London: Penguin, 1975, p. 131
19/ Strong, Geoff. Review. The Age. Melbourne, 28/04/1982
20/ Conversation with the photographer 22/01/1997, Melbourne, Victoria
21/ The principal definition for ambiguity in Websters Third New International Dictionary is: “admitting of two or more meanings … referring to two or more things at the same time.” That for ambivalence is “contradictory and oscillating subjective states.” Quoted in Davis, Fred. Fashion, Culture and Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 21.
22/ Levine, Donald. The Flight From Ambiguity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985
23/ Berger, John and Mohr, Jean. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982, p. 95
Fredrick White (Australian) Before The After 2010 Steel 220 x 105 x 95cm
Another beautiful sculpture by Australian sculptor Fredrick White that will be appearing in the Montalto Sculpture Prize that opens this weekend at 33 Shoreham Road, Red Hill South, Victoria and continues until 1st May, 2011. The work has great presence and continues the artist’s exploration into the matrix of what is seen and not seen, what lies above and below. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Fredrick White (Australian) Before The After 2010 Steel 220 x 105 x 95cm
Exhibition dates: 7th December 2010 – 14th February 2011
Many thankx to the Rijksmuseum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) Don’t Smoke, Visits Saloons 1910
Lewis Hine. May 1910. Wilmington, Delaware. “James Lequlla, newsboy, age 12. Selling newspapers 3 years. Average earnings 50 cents per week. Selling newspapers own choice. Earnings not needed at home. Don’t smoke. Visits saloons. Works 7 hours per day.”
Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006) Bessie Fontenelle and Little Richard in bed, Harlem New York 1968 Gelatin silver print
Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) Squatting girl/spider girl, New York City 1980
From 7 December, the Rijksmuseum will display a selection of 20th-century photographic works acquired in recent years with the support of Baker & McKenzie. The sponsorship from the renowned law firm has already allowed the museum to purchase more than thirty photographs, including works by László Moholy-Nagy, Bill Brandt, Robert Capa and Helen Levitt, as well as photography books by Man Ray and others. When it reopens in 2013, the Rijksmuseum will be the only museum in the Netherlands able to provide an overview of the history of photography in the Netherlands and abroad.
The most recent acquisition sponsored by Baker & McKenzie and the independent art fund Vereniging Rembrandt is a monumental photograph by Bauhaus photographer László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). The photograph from 1929 is a key work that marks the transition into modernity. From atop a high bridge, the Pont Transbordeur in Marseille, Moholy-Nagy pointed his camera straight down, where an almost abstract pattern of metal beams contrasted with the sailing boat passing under the bridge. Metal, bridges, machines, aeroplanes and cars formed the icons of a new era for Moholy-Nagy’s generation of artists. They were faced with advancing technology, an enormous increase in scale and mechanisation, and a faster pace of life.
The other photographs to be displayed represent a range of movements in the history of photography. Two photographs by Emil Otto Hoppé (1878-1972) will be displayed. They are both studies of form focusing first and foremost on composition, just as in the Moholy-Nagy work. It was in around 1920 that Hoppé photographed the play of light on cobblestones in New York, and the building of a metal construction in Philadelphia.
The documentary aspects of photography will also be highlighted, with magnificent portraits of a black mother and her child in a report about Harlem in the late 1960s (by Gordon Parks), and a portrait of two men in the southern ‘Cotton States’ of America during the Great Depression of the 1930s (by Peter Sekaer). As early as 1909, Lewis Hine used photography as a weapon in the struggle against injustice. Commissioned by the National Child Labour Committee he documented the child labour industry, in this case a small boy standing on the street selling newspapers.
During the 1930s, Bill Brandt published a (now famous) book on life in London at the time, from which came the photograph Sky lightens over the suburbs, which is both a study of form and documentary in nature. It shows a forest of glistening roofs, depicted in a melancholy yet realistic manner.
In 1942, Piet Mondrian was photographed in his studio by Arnold Newman, a session from which the Rijksmuseum has acquired a range of photographs. There are few portraits of Mondrian in Dutch collections, making this series particularly special.
A work by Helen Levitt is one of the few colour photographs included in the exhibition. Until the 1980s, colour photography was simply ‘not done’ and Levitt was one of the first to experiment with the method. The photograph of a girl searching for something underneath a green car is a marvellous example of composition in colour.
Press release from the Rijksmuseum website
Arnold Newman (American, 1918-2006) Piet Mondrian, New York 1942 Gelatin silver print
Emil Otto Hoppé (British born Germany, 1979-1942) Steel construction, Philadelphia 1926 Gelatin silver print
László Moholy-Nagy (Hungary, 1895-1946) View from Pont Transbordeur, Marseille 1929 Gelatin silver print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Jan Luijkenstraat 1, Amsterdam
Anyone who reads this archive regularly will know of my love of exceptional jewellery. This posting satiates my desire!
The Calder pieces are just outstanding.
Marcus
Many thankx to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs to see a larger version of the image.
Calder possessed an uncanny ability to synthesise a variety of influences from the world around him to create often simple, always meaningful, and ultimately modern jewellery. In the early 20th century, many avant-garde artists began to collect African tribal art and to reference it in their paintings and sculptures. Likewise, Calder’s brooches, tiaras, and necklaces have more in common with the pectorals, collars, diadems, and neckpieces made by ancient cultures than traditional western European jewellery. For example, Calder repeatedly incorporated the spiral – a typical motif in late Bronze Age artefacts – into his jewellery, as well as his wire figures, drawings, paintings, and other decorative arts. The artist’s personal collections, which included objects from African, Oceanic, and Precolumbian cultures, substantiate his eclectic taste.
Calder’s exploration of jewellery in the 1930s also coincided with his burgeoning interest in Surrealism. As his largest and most dramatic ornaments are unwieldy to wear, Calder’s jewellery may be seen as a Surrealistic strategy to entrap the wearer into participating in an art performance or being metamorphosed by the object. Among those who wore his jewellery were sophisticated art aficionados and artists, such as Peggy Guggenheim, Mary Rockefeller, French actress Jeanne Moreau, and Georgia O’Keeffe.
His sculptural art, regardless of category, has less to do with solidity than with lightness, air, motion, and graceful formal relationships. Calder’s sense of economy, balance, and adaptability, so characteristic of the artist’s much larger and more familiar mobiles and stabiles, extends to his jewellery. While Calder’s more diminutive avant-garde creations converged closely with the aesthetics of the modern age, they remain unmistakably Calder.
Anon. “Metropolitan Museum of Art features Alexander Calder – Inventive Jewelry” on Art Knowledge News website Nd. [Online] Cited 11/01/2011 no longer available online
Artist’s jewels. From Modernisme to the avant-garde explores the approach to the world of jewellery by leading artists of the main art movements in the first decades of the fertile 20th century. The exhibition gathers almost 350 works, chiefly jewels, that strike a dialogue with paintings, sculptures, photographs, fabrics and objets d’art, showing how jewellery made up the little universe of great artists.
Artist’s jewels. From Modernisme to the avant-garde reveals the relations between jewellery and the work of art. This exhibition, the first on this subject to be held in our country, shows the less well-known side of Auguste Rodin, Hector Guimard, Josef Hoffmann, Josep Llimona, Serrurier-Bovy, Henri Van de Velde, Manolo Hugué, Paco Durrio, Pau Gargallo, Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Charlotte Perriand, Hans Arp, Pablo Picasso, Juli González, Henri Laurens and many others.
Painters and sculptors, since earliest times, have transferred their artistic forms to the world of jewellery, but it was not until the end of the 20th century, under the powerful influence of Art Nouveau, that artists approached this discipline more openly: ‘Carrying out a large work’, according to Otto Wagner, ‘means expressing beauty without distinguishing between large and small’.
The merger of arts that was a feature of Modernisme and the subsequent elimination of borders between the arts reached a crescendo in the 1920s and 1930s and crystallised in the numerous interesting incursions into the world of jewellery by the painters, sculptors and architects of the historic avant-garde. In producing these small-format objects (‘micro-sculptures’ or ‘painted jewels’), artists channelled their artistic thinking from different perspectives.
The exhibition opens with a selection of items produced by jeweller artists, who very often also cultivated multiple skills and who incorporated into their creations the offerings of the artistic movements of the time.
The high point of the first section of the exhibition are the jewels by René Lalique, which were purchased at the time of their production by European museums, rich amateurs and collectors. This is the case of the pendant purchased by the director of the Hamburg Museum at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, the jewels purchased by Calouste Gulbenkian and the unique pendant Antoni Amatller bought in Paris for his daughter Teresa. In a dialogue with these works are the ones with rich enamelling and varied ranges of colour made by the Barcelona jeweller Lluís Masriera, who played a key role in introducing the new style to Barcelona.
Making up the core of the exhibition are the jewels conceived by artists who were not jewellers, such as Hector Guimard, Paco Durrio, Manolo Hugué, Herich Heckel, Pau Gargallo, Juli González, Joaquim Gomis, Ramón Teixé, Anni Albers, Charlotte Perriand, Alexander Calder, Henri Laurens, Hans Arp, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Salvador Dalí. This second section shows these artists’ production in relation to their usual work of painting, sculpture, photography and other creations, establishing parallels with the artistic disciplines they worked at and revealing the affinities and echoes between them.
The legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement and the Bauhaus, which were committed to integration between all the arts, can clearly be seen in the work of these artists, who opened the way to experimentation in the arts, questioning the very nature of jewellery, and who incorporated new materials into their production that were foreign to the tradition of precious metals. Examples of this are Ramon Teixé’s unusual creations in iron, glass, enamel and string and the jewellery by the sculptor Josep de Creeft made with bits of scrap metal from his motor car, not forgetting the jewellery by the architect and designer Charlotte Perriand or the ones produced by the photographer Joan Gomis in collaboration with Manuel Capdevila, which make use of shells and pebbles like real objets trouvées.
Alongside these hand-made items of jewellery that are often produced with non-precious materials, we are exhibiting the ones designed by Braque and Dalí and manufactured by professional jewellers using noble materials like rubies, sapphires or diamonds.
A third section of the exhibition explores the relationship between jewels and the body and shows a selection of clothes, mainly loaned by the Museo del Traje in Madrid, and photographs from the 1930s by Man Ray, Edward Steichen, George Hoyningen-Huené and Horst P. Horst.
The works presented in this exhibition come from public institutions and museums all over the world, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Institut d’Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao and the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, who have generously made an exception in lending some of the most emblematic jewels in their collections, as well as from the MNAC itself and from numerous European and American private collections.”
Press release from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya website
Exhibition dates: 26th November 2010 – 27th February, 2011
A Queensland Art Gallery Touring Exhibition
Ava Seymour (New Zealand, b. 1967) State Highway I 1997 From Health, happiness and housing series Colour photograph of a photomontage
Ava Seymour (New Zealand b. 1967) Day Care Walkabouts 1997 From Health, happiness and housing series Photomontage on colour photograph
New Zealand art adrift in a myriad of stories and symbols – not a brave ‘new world’
This is an underwhelming group exhibition of over 100 works drawn from the Queensland Art Gallery collection, a show to wander around on a lazy weekend afternoon and not get too excited about. The large number of works in the exhibition make it impossible to review each work individually (although I critique some works below) but one does get an overall sense of the investigation by New Zealand artists into their history, place, culture and identity. While there are a few good works in the exhibition there are also some very mediocre works as well and, other than a few splashes of self-deprecating humour (such as the wonderful The Horn of Africa (2006) by Michael Parekowhai, below) it all seems importantly earnest: an exhibition for serious people (apologies to Oscar Wilde).
On the evidence of this exhibition the country of New Zealand must be a very unnerving place to live, mainly because their artists can’t seem to keep their hand off it – cultural history that is.
Throughout this exhibition we have psychological unease, physical unease, a little humour, parody, poetry, symbology, allegory, mythology, colonialism, post-colonialism, nationalism, commercialisation, representation, anthropology, travel, landscape, topography, advertising, first contact, sacred spaces, indigenous politics, Māori culture, Pacific Islander culture, pakeha (non-indigenous) culture, tools, guns, rabbits, seals, pianos, traditional tattoos, tourist sites and museums, surfing, suburbia, personal journeys, family albums, androgyny, identity, public housing, ambiguous states, hyperreality, surreality, dislocation, disenfranchisement, alienation, bodies, portraits, subjects, past, present, future (and more!)
Ronnie van Hout exhibits three atmospheric, eerie, dark photographs of constructed model landscapes: of a Nazi doodlebug and the words ABDUCT and HYBRID. The wall text tries, unsuccessfully, to link the images to the obscure and haunted landscapes of New Zealand – a very long bow to draw indeed. Bill Cuthbert’s “nice” photographs offer generalised statements of light and place but really don’t take you anywhere and in fact could have been taken anywhere. The wall text offers that the photographs are a “self-conscious, critical response” to the dismantling of colonial ideas of empire and nation … this is art speak gobbledygook at its worst trying to justify basic photography.
Mark Adams panoramic photograph of one of the sites of first contact – an important historical moment of encounter between Māori and pakeha (non-Māori people of European descent) – are a beautiful photograph of a sound and mountains that has then been dissected, fragmented and individually framed and then mounted unevenly on the gallery wall – just to make sure we get the point about the ‘nature’ of the scenery and its cultural implications. Lonnie Hutchinson’s cut wall work Cinco “offers an interplay between paper and space and explores the ‘va’ or space between – a relation between the Samoan people and the landscape saturated with the dialogue of our ancestors … being adrift in a sea of memories caused by feelings related to cultural loss and uncertainty.” I know how they feel: adrift, underwhelmed by the art and overwhelmed by the text.
Other than the striking photograph of the Dandy (2007, below) Lisa Reihana’s series Digital Marae (2001- ) also fails to inspire. The marae is a highly structure space where Māori families come together – an outdoor, cleared area, a communal or sacred place which serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. Here can be found male sculptures called poupou featuring diverse forms of masculinity, Māori gods and goddesses. The elder Mahuika, while sometimes described as male, is deliberately depicted in her female state in this series. In Reihanna’s digital interpretation of the marae her gods and goddesses become slick, media-inspired glossy magazine type images printed large, mounted on aluminium and lit for maximum theatrical effect. The unstructured spaces behind the figures have no context, no placement and give lie to the inspiration for the series (a highly structured space) and, as such, they land with a commercial thud onto the cleared earth.
The lowest point in the exhibition must be reserved for the 80 photographs of the series ‘The homely’ (1997-2000) by Gavin Hipkins. Usually when reviewing I refrain from saying anything bad about works of art. Robert Nelson in The Age describes the series as “visually and conceptually incoherent.” Taken over 4 years and supposedly “examining notions of nationhood that are unstable and fractured” Hipkins describes it as “a post-colonial gothic novel.” !!
The series features flat, one-dimensional images of symbols: sculptures, closed doors, open doors, flags, people, repeating circles and vertical elements – where the aggregate of all the images is supposed to MEAN SOMETHING. These are the most simple, most basic of year 12 images formed into a sequence that is conceptually irrelevant in terms of its symbolism and iconography vis a vis the purported critical examination it seeks to undertake. This artist needs to look at the sequences of Minor White to see how a master artist puts photographs together – not just in terms of narrative but the meaning in the spaces between the images, their spiritual resonance – or if wanting to be more literal, study that seminal book The Americans by Robert Frank to see how to really make a sequence.
On to better things. For me the absolute gem of this exhibition were the photomontages of Ava Seymour from her ‘Health, happiness and housing’ series (see photographs above). These are just fantastic! Featuring as a backdrop photographs of state houses built in the 1950s and 60s Seymour assembles her cast of characters – composite figures of found limbs, bodies and faces taken from old medical text books – and creates stark, psychological sites of engagement. The can be seen as family portraits, social documents of unseen alienation and dis-enfranchisement with communities and also a comment on the conduct of the welfare system and state housing, but in their ironic, self-deprecating humour they become so much more. Even though they use old photographs the artist recasts them ingenuously to become something new, a new space that the viewer can step into, unlike most of the work in this exhibition.
Most artists in this exhibition seem intent on a form of cultural excavation to make their work, digging and rooting around in cultural history and memory to find “meaning”, to make new forms from old that actually lead nowhere. They excavate symbols and signs and reform them hoping for what, exactly? All that appears is work that is stunted and fragmented, chopped up dislocations that offer nothing new in terms of a way forward for the culture from which these histories and memories emerge. There is no holistic, healing vision here, only a series of mined observations that fragment, distort and polarise, descending into the decorative, illustrative or the commercial. The same can be said of some Australian art (including the exhibition Stormy Weather: Contemporary Landscape Photography at NGV Federation Square that I will review next). As Robert Nelson succinctly observed in his review of this exhibition in The Age (Wednesday, December 29th, 2010), this exhibition “reveals a weakness that also exists in our scene: fertile tricks and noble intentions, but patchy skill or poetic imagination for connecting them.” Well said.
“”When the soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it.” (Meister Eckhart) It is an evocation of the image as a threshold leading to new dimensions of meaning. Symbolic images are more than data; they are vital seeds, living carriers of possibility.”1
New dimensions of meaning, vital seeds, living carriers of possibility. Everyone of us is a living, breathing embodiment of cultural history and memory. We know that intimately in our bones, as human beings. What artists need to do is observe this legacy but offer a way forward, not constantly excavating the past and hoping this is enough when creating work. These are not new spaces to step into! The cohabitation of indigenous and ethnically mixed non-indigenous cultures in both Australia and New Zealand requires this holistic forward looking vision. It is a redemptive vision that is not mired in the symbols and archetypes of the past but, as Australia writer David Malouf envisages it, ‘a dream history, a myth history, a history of experience in the imagination’.2 It is a vision of the future that all post-colonial countries can embrace, where a people can come to know their sense of place more fully.
Rather than an escapist return to the past perhaps a redemptive vision of New Zealand’s cultural future, a history of experience in the imagination, would be less insular and more open to the capacity to wonder.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Ronnberg, Ami (ed.,). “Preface,” in The Book of Symbols. Cologne: Taschen, 2010, p. 6
2/ Footnote 6. Daniel, Helen. “Interview with David Malouf,” in Australian Book Review (September , 1996), p. 13 quoted in Ennis, Helen. “The Presence of the Past,” in Photography and Australia. London: Reaktion Books, 2007, p. 141
Many thankx to Jemma Altmeier for her help and to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The National Gallery of Victoria today opened a major exhibition celebrating the extraordinary work of 26 contemporary New Zealand artists in Unnerved: The New Zealand Project.
Unnerved explores a particularly rich, dark vein found in contemporary New Zealand art. The psychological or physical unease underlying many works in the exhibition is addressed with humour, parody and poetic subtlety by artists across generations and mediums. Bringing together more than 100 works ranging from intimate works on paper to large scale installations by both established and emerging artists, Unnerved engages with New Zealand’s changing social, political and cultural landscape as the country navigates its indigenous settler and migrant histories. These works explore a changing sense of place, the continued importance of contemporary Maori art, biculturalism, a complex colonial past, the creative reworking of memory, and the often interconnected mediums of performance, photography and video. If the vision is unsettling, it is also compelling and Unnerved: The New Zealand Project offers us new ways of seeing one of our closest neighbours.
This fascinating exhibition explores a rich and dark vein found in contemporary art in New Zealand, drawing on the disquieting aspects of New Zealand’s history and culture reflected through more than 100 works of art.
Jane Devery, Coordinating Curator, NGV said: “The works presented in Unnerved reveal a darkness and distinctive edginess that characterises this particular trend in New Zealand contemporary art. The psychological or physical unease underlying many works in the exhibitions is addressed with humour, parody and poetic subtlety.
The exhibition reflects the strength and vitality of contemporary art in New Zealand with works created by both established and emerging artists, across a range of mediums including painting, photography, sculpture, installation, drawing, film and video.
Unnerved engages with New Zealand’s changing social, political and cultural landscape, exploring a shifting sense of place, complex colonial past, the relationships between contemporary Māori, Pacific Islander and pakeha (non-indigenous) culture, and the interplay between performance, video and photography,” said Ms Devery.
A highlight of the exhibition is a group of sculptural works by Michael Parekowhai including his giant inflatable rabbit, Cosmo McMurtry, which will greet visitors to the exhibition, and a spectacular life-size seal balancing a grand piano on its nose titled The Horn of Africa. Also on display are a series of haunting photographs by Yvonne Todd, whose portrait photography often refers to B-grade films and pulp fiction novels.
Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said this exhibition demonstrates the NGV’s strong commitment to interesting and challenging contemporary art secured from around the world; he noted that the NGV has made a special commitment to exhibition the contemporary art of our region.
“Unnerved will introduce visitors to the rich contemporary arts scene of one of our closest neighbours, fascinating audiences with works ranging from the life size installations by Parekowhai through to the spectacular 30 metre photographic essay by Gavin Hipkins. This truly is a must see show this summer!” said Dr Vaughan.
Unnerved will also offer a strong and engaging collection of contemporary sculpture, installations, drawings, paintings, photography, film and video art by artists including Lisa Reihana, John Pule, Gavin Hipkins, Anne Noble, Ronnie van Hout, Shane Cotton, Julian Hooper and many others.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Margarette 1981 Oil and straw on canvas 280 cm x 380cm
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Man under a Pyramid 1996 Emulsion, acrylic, shellac and ash on burlap 2810 x 5020 x 50 mm ARTIST ROOMS: Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Palm Sunday 2006 Mixed media installation Overall display dimensions variable ARTIST ROOMS: Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Installation view of the exhibition Anselm Kiefer at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead showing at left, Keifer’s work Palette (1981, below)
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Palette 1981 Oil, shellac and emulsion on canvas 2917 x 4000 x 35 mm ARTIST ROOMS: Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art proudly announces a major exhibition of the work of Anselm Kiefer, one of the foremost figures of European post-war painting. The exhibition includes a diverse body of work, offering a selection that spans four decades and ranges from early paintings to monumental installations. Presented over two floors of BALTIC’s galleries, the exhibition is Kiefer’s largest in the UK for many years and has been made possible by ARTIST ROOMS On Tour with the Art Fund.
Following the success of 2009, 21 museums and galleries across the UK in 2010 will be showing 25 ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions and displays from the collection created by the curator and collector, Anthony d’Offay, and acquired by the nation in February 2008. ARTIST ROOMS On Tour with the Art Fund has been devised to enable this collection held by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, to reach and inspire new audiences across the country, particularly young people.
Anselm Kiefer at BALTIC includes painting, sculpture and installation, some of which has been rarely seen before. The starting point for Kiefer’s work is his fascination with myth, history, theology, philosophy and literature. For many years his painting was a vehicle to come to terms with his country’s past, and subsequently became ever concerned with religious traditions and the symbolism of different cultures. Kiefer’s weighty subject matters are reflected in the monumental scale of many of his works, while his keen exploration and visceral layering of materials such as lead, ash, rope and human hair bring an emotional potency.
Among the paintings to be included in the exhibition are three works from the artist’s early Parsifal series (1973), drawn from Richard Wagner’s last opera and its 13th century source, a romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach based upon the legend of the Holy Grail. With Palette 1981, Kiefer revealed the problematic legacy inherited by artists in post-war Germany: the artist’s palette hangs from a single burning thread evoking shame, loss and the apparent impossibility of artistic creation. The expansive Man under a Pyramid 1996, which measures more than five meters long, continues the artist’s interest in meditation and the linking of body and mind.
Also included is Palmsonntag 2006 which comprises a vast sequence of 36 paintings arranged around a full-size palm tree. While avoiding explicit religious statement, the work draws upon the Christian narrative of Palm Sunday to explore death and resurrection, decay, re-creation and rejuvenation; human themes that are central to Kiefer’s practice and that will be identified throughout this presentation.
Anselm Kiefer biography
Anselm Kiefer was born 1945 in Donauschingen, Germany, at the close of World War II. He studied art formally under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy in the early 1970s where history and myth became central themes in his work.
In 1971 Kiefer produced his first large-scale landscape paintings and from 1973 he began to experiment with wooden interiors on a monumental scale. His preoccupation with recent German history is seen throughout his work and his use of recurring motifs, such as an artist’s palette symbolises his emotional journey relating to this period. Kiefer has made increasing use of materials such as sand, straw, wood, dirt and photographs, as well as sewn materials and lead model soldiers. By adding found materials to the painted surface Kiefer invented a compelling third space between painting and sculpture. Recent work has broadened his range yet further: in 2006 he showed a series of paintings based around the little-known work of the modernist Russian poet Velimir Chlebnikov (1885-1922).
Kiefer has had extensive exhibitions internationally including the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1987), Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (1991), The Metropolitan Museum, New York (1998), Royal Academy, London (2001), Fort Worth Museum of Art, Fort Worth (2005) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006).
Press release from the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art website
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Urd Werdande Skuld (The Norns) 1983 Oil, shellac, emulsion and fibre on canvas 4205 x 2805 x 60 mm ARTIST ROOMS: Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008
Installation view of the exhibition Anselm Kiefer at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead showing from left to right, Parsifal I (1973, below); Parsifal II (1973, below); and Parsifal III (1973, below)
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Parsifal I 1973 Oil on paper laid on canvas 3247 x 2198 mm
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Parsifal II 1973 Oil and blood on paper laid on canvas 3247 x 2188 mm
Anselm Kiefer (German, b. 1945) Parsifal III 1973 Oil and blood on paper on canvas 3007 x 4345 mm
BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead Quays, South Shore Road, Gateshead NE8 3BA, UK Phone: +44 (0) 191 478 1810
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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