Review: ‘Anne Ferran: Box of Birds’ at Stills Gallery, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 26th June – 27th July 2013

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Agitated thrush
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

tar·ant·ism [tar-uhn-tiz-uhm]
noun
a mania characterised by an uncontrollable impulse to dance, especially as prevalent in southern Italy from the 15th to the 17th century, popularly attributed to the bite of the tarantula.

I have never been a great fan of Anne Ferran’s exhumations. Her digging into the ground of history and restoring, reviving (after neglect or a period of forgetting) traces of life and bringing them into light (through photography) – bringing them back to light – has resulted in images that are paradoxically pretty, lifeless. For example, photographs of patches of grass in Lost to Worlds (2008) are given great import as contemporary evidence of the site of a female convict prison, near the small village of Ross, Tasmania as Ferran, “continues to play with the invisibility of this specific history, using large-scale photographs to show what little remains today, and to collectively reflect on the difficulty of grasping a ruined and fragmented past.”

And… so… what else?

These photographs really mean very little, another example of an artist picking at the scab of history to what end, what purpose, other than to dig up deleted histories that are past their use by date. Move on, move on, nothing to see here!

And there is literally nothing to see, except patches of grass that are given import by the contextualisation of the artist, the “look at this, I think it is important because I have seen it, because I have researched it, because I am an artist, because I am aware” – when the interrogation actually means very little. It is like the prevalence of contemporary photographs of empty, abandoned spaces – abandoned petrol stations, hospitals, insane asylums – that are supposed to impart great poetry and narrative to the spaces. Ruin porn as Dan Rule termed it recently.

Thankfully, these latest photographs are of a different taxonomic order. They are vital, alive, full of swirling tarantism that beautifully expresses the trapped energy that Ferran saw in a 1940s photographic archive of 38 unidentified women who were patients of a Sydney psychiatric hospital. In their formalist abstraction the artist has perfectly captured the unquiet spirit of the women and – here is the crux of the matter for me – these photographs allow me to go further into the subject, they take me to a different place and don’t just leave me on the surface of the image / history. They speak to me, they n/trance in multiple ways like little of Ferran’s work has done before for I feel this work, this hidden narrative, in the artist’s performative shaping of reality. Suddenly these women, trapped in a space (of the photograph, of the archive) and place (of the hospital), can spread their wings and anonymously shake their feathers (their spirit) with declamatory enthusiasm. As an artist friend of mine Julie Clarke observed, “I was captured by the amount of folds in the fabric Ferran has used. Her emphasis on ‘felt’ as felt emotion and the feeling associated with those almost absent bodies is intriguing.” And how that felt emotion relates to the work of Joseph Beuys and his use of felt as insulation, warmth and a kind of comfort, here represented in institutional form (I am reminded by the markings on the felt of the arrows of prison garments).

As the text for the exhibition states, “This new series marks a significant shift in approach, as Ferran harnesses photography and performance in an endeavour to manifest the archive’s continuing power in the present. Ferran’s performers conceal their identities behind lengths and swathes of painted felt, in some cases creating strange and outlandish figures in a disorder of material, bodies and space.”

It is a welcome shift in approach. Ferran’s mental, material dis/order produces significantly more memorable images than what has “passed” before, imaging as they do a conflation of past, present and future rather than relying on the death of the historical archive evidenced in the deathly photograph.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Clamorous shrike
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Conspicuous kite
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Night whistler
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Pale-headed flycatcher
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Slender-throated warbler
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Stonebird
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Tricoloured sylph
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
72 x 48cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Feathered Emissary
2013
From Box of Birds series
Pigment print
60 x 80cm
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Over the past 20 years Anne Ferran has worked with the residues of Australia and New Zealand’s colonial histories, probing them for gaps and silences. She has been especially drawn to the lives of anonymous women and children, seeking to shed light on their presence, and absence, in museum collections, photographic archives and historic sites. It is characteristic of Ferran’s images that the subject is not what is seen but rather what haunts it, something only partially visible. Intellectually and emotionally engaging, her photographs have explored episodes of incarceration in prisons, asylums, hospitals and nurseries, giving voice to the spectres of the lost and unseen.

Box of Birds returns to the subject matter of her previous works INSULA and 1-38: 1940s photographs of 38 unidentified women who were patients of a Sydney psychiatric hospital. In a significant shift of approach, rather than exhuming traces of the past, Ferran harnesses photography and performance in an endeavour to manifest its continuing power in the present.

Ferran’s process alternated between the considered and the uncontrollable. Female performers were instructed to hold pieces of felt up to her camera, the 38 lengths of dyed and painted fabric recalling the crumpled clothes worn by the women in the original photographic archive. Other images were wholly improvised, the performers creating strange and outlandish figures out of a disorder of material, bodies and space.

In a deliberate departure from the 1940s archive, Ferran’s performers conceal their identities behind lengths and swathes of fabric, raising ethical questions about photography’s role in recognition, representation and expression.

All the work in Box of Birds aims to elicit the energy Ferran saw trapped in those 1940s photographs, their unquiet spirit.

Press release from the Stills Gallery website

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Chorus No.1
2013
From Box of Birds series
38 Pigment prints
60 x 42cm each
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Chorus No.2
2013
From Box of Birds series
38 Pigment prints
60 x 42cm each
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Chorus No.3
2013
From Box of Birds series
38 Pigment prints
60 x 42cm each
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Chorus No.4
2013
From Box of Birds series
38 Pigment prints
60 x 42cm each
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Chorus No.5
2013
From Box of Birds series
38 Pigment prints
60 x 42cm each
Editions of 5 + 2AP

Stills Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

Stills Gallery website

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Review: Polixeni Papapetrou ‘A Performative Paradox’ and Daniel von Sturmer  ’After Images’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th May – 14th July 2013

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Drag queen wearing cut out dress
1993
Gelatin silver photograph
28.5 x 28.5cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

Two solid if not overly memorable exhibitions are presented at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

Polixeni Papapetrou A Performative Paradox is a bit of a dog’s breakfast. While it is wonderful to see early work by this artist – work that features Marilyn and Elvis impersonators, circus people, body builders and drag queens – too many bodies of work are crammed into too small a space with too few images. Some of the later series are represented by just one image giving a hotch potch feel to the whole exhibition ensemble. Perhaps it would have been better to concentrate solely on the early black-and-white images and colour images, work that is rarely seen and informs the staged work that followed. Having said that the black-and-white photographs are a joy to behold, documenting as they do performative identities. The photographs have an intangible presence. There are strong elements of the frontality of Diane Arbus in the photographs of circus performers and drag queens, coupled with a intrinsic understanding of light and texture. The photographs of drag queens are the highlight of both exhibitions and Drag queen wearing cut out dress (1993, below) reminded me of an early black-and-white photograph by Fiona Hall (Leura, New South Wales, 1974) in its use of patterned wallpaper. Let us hope there is a large retrospective of Polixeni’s work (at NGV or Heide for example) in the future, one that can do justice to the depth and complexity of her vision as an artist.

Daniel von Sturmer  After Images is an interesting conceptual experiment, one that investigates the splitting of the image (shadow) from its referent (object). “The images propose a kind of transference; the object itself may be insignificant but its subjective meaning carries weight, and its shadow leaves a space the viewer fills with their own reading.” In their black-and-white fuzziness the work looks impressive when viewed in the gallery space (see installation views below) but upon close inspection the individual photographs fail to hold the viewers attention. Personally, I found it difficult to impart any great meaning to any of these works and the investigation certainly does not produce memorable images, ones that will stay with the viewer months and years later. For me the exhibition became an exercise in guessing what shadows were which objects, a game that grew quickly tiresome. The work then became an exercise in the importance of captioning an image, as I constantly looked around the room trying to match the titles of the works with the images themselves. As abstract images they imparted little metaphysical poetry as ghost images (an afterimage or ghost image is an optical illusion that refers to an image continuing to appear in one’s vision after the exposure to the original image has ceased). As images that investigate the link between text, object, shadow and language they started to become what the artist sought to enunciate: shadow objects bound to the realm of signification in some amorphous play, shadows that have the potential to become ‘Other’.

PS. As an analogy you could see these images as the equivalent of Jung’s human “shadow aspect” where, according to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to projection (as these shadows are projected by their objects). The shadow represents the entirety of the unconscious, ie. everything of which a person is not fully conscious, and is the seat of creativity. “Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” (Jung, C.G. (1938). “Psychology and Religion.” In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. p. 131). Hence the potential halo/cination of these images.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the CCP for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All installation photographs © Marcus Bunyan

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Suzie, Elvis fan at home, Melbourne
1989
Selenium toned gelatin silver photograph
40.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Indian Brave
2002
Pigment ink print
85 x 85cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Three young men paying homage to Elvis on the 13th anniversary of Elvis’ death, Elvis Memorial Melbourne
1990
Selenium toned gelatin silver photograph
40.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

This exhibition focuses on the performative in the work of Polixeni Papapetrou, from her early documentary work through to her directorial work with her children since 2002, regarded internationally as some of the most powerful and provocative works in the field of perfomative photography. Papapetrou’s enduring interest is in how the ‘other’ is represented and how the ‘other’ performs in reinforcing our own identity.

Polixeni Papapetrou is one of Australia’s leading contemporary photomedia artists. She has been exploring relationships between history, contemporary culture, landscape, identity and childhood through her photographic practice since the mid-eighties. In this exhibition, selected by Professor Anne Marsh in consultation with the artist, a particular thread has been selected across Papapetrou’s practice – that of the performative – from her early documentary work through to her directorial work with her children from 2002 to the present.

Her images are informed by her own experience as ‘other’, growing up as a Greek immigrant in a white, Anglo-Saxon, male-dominated culture in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s. Marilyn Monroe impersonators, Elvis Presley fans, body builders, circus performers and drag queens have all taken their turn in front of Papapetrou’s camera. All of these people are, one way or another, performing identities.

In 2002 Papapetrou turned her focus to the experience of childhood, using her children as the performers in her pictures. There is a challenging confusion between fantasy, mythology, archetype, animism and theatricality present in these works, ranging from the playful to the transgressive, wrangling with the question of identity and stressing the embodied nature of experience.

Text from the CCP website

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Fortune teller' 1989 (detail)

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Fortune teller (detail)
1989
From the series Ashton Circus, Silvers Circus 1989-1990

Polixeni Papapetrou. 'Levitation, Silvers Circus' 1989 (detail)

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Levitation, Silvers Circus (detail)
1989
From the series Ashton Circus, Silvers Circus 1989-1990

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Ashton Circus, Silvers Circus' series 1989-1990 (installation view)

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Ashton Circus, Silvers Circus series (installation view)
1989-1990
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Polixeni Papapetrou 'A Performative Paradox' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)

Installation views of Polixeni Papapetrou A Performative Paradox at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Daniel von Sturmer (New Zealand, b. 1972)
Production Still for After Images
Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney

In After Images the shadows of a set of subjectively ‘important artefacts’ (a business card, a phone, a letter…) are presented alongside generic objects from the studio, for example: a bin, some tape, a ruler… Presented at 1:1 scale, the images propose a kind of transference; the object itself may be insignificant but its subjective meaning carries weight, and its shadow leaves a space the viewer fills with their own reading.

Photographed using a specially constructed ‘set’ to enable the separation of an object from its shadow, the resulting image stands alone, separated from its object yet inextricably bound to the realm of signification from which it has been cast.

Text from the CCP website

Installation view of Daniel von Sturmer 'After Images' at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)

Installation views of Daniel von Sturmer  After Images at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Centre for Contemporary Photography

No permanent exhibition space at the moment

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Exhibition: ‘Petrina Hicks: Selected Photographs, 2013’ at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 12th June – 6th July 2013

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
Venus
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 100cm

“They’re thoughtful pictures that arouse curiosity rather than desire.”

Robert Nelson

A stunning, eloquent and conceptually complex exhibition buy Petrina Hicks at Helen Gory Galerie. It seems churlish to repeat writing about the themes and mythologies exhibited in the work after they have been so excellently delineated in the catalogue essay by Dan Rule. Everything that you need to know about the work is in that concise piece of writing.

I am just going to add that the photograph Venus (2013, above) is one of the most beautiful photographs that I have seen “in the flesh” (so to speak) for a long time. Hicks control over the ‘presence’ of the image, her control over the presence within the image is immaculate. To observe how she modulates the colour shift from blush of pink within the conch shell, to colour of skin, to colour of background is an absolute joy to behold. The pastel colours of skin and background only serve to illuminate the richness of the pink within the shell as a form of immaculate conception (an openness of the mind and of the body). I don’t really care who is looking at this photograph (not another sexualised male gaze!) the form is just beauty itself. I totally fell in love with this work.

Forget the neo-feminist readings, one string of text came to mind: The high fidelity of a fetishistic fecundity.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
The Birth of Venus
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 133cm

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
Birdfingers
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 100cm

Beauty and Artifice

Catalogue Essay by Dan Rule

“There’s a particular acuteness to the various strands, cues and counterpoints informing Petrina Hicks’ by now extensive body of work. Her highly keyed brand of hyperrealism is at once incisive in tenor and rich in historical, referential and allegorical depth.

An obvious vantage has long been that of the advertised image. Hicks’ subjects, palette and props are enveloped in a slickened and stunningly sickening sheen that is all too familiar. Augmented, buffed and polished, her works are traces of the highly aestheticised and fetishistic images that proliferate throughout the popular visual language. The skin, hair, clothing, surface and light assume an all but unsettling patina. The index is set askew amid the insidious markers of style and desire.

But Hicks’ highly constructed images aren’t mere transgressions of what has become a gleaming vernacular form. Every encroachment into the frame, every flat, luridly coloured backdrop has an implication and a consequence. In previous works, she has broached creation mythologies; she has recast religious subplots and in gloss and saccharine. Her 2011 series Hippy and the Snake – which comprised a painstakingly realised 25-minute video work alongside a collection of large-scale photographs – might have been read as a flirtation with Eve’s dalliance with the serpent in a re-imagined Garden of Eden.

Sex, birth and death also lurk amid Hicks’ latest series of images, presented as the central strand of her Selected Photographs exhibition. Set against a muted, neutral backdrop, these large-format photographs broach both the portrait and the still life, teasing out a taxonomy of sensuous allegories and sinister omens. In the somewhat aptly titled Bird Fingers, a young girl intently studies her fingertips, each of which is adorned with a tiny bird’s skull, as if a finger puppet or a jewel. That the girl’s expression is neither one of fear nor admiration – but rather, a measured intrigue – gives this work a fascinating twist. Her reaction to death is unlearned; she studies and surveys and pieces together the evidence. Another work, The Hand That Feeds, sees another young protagonist calmly offering her palm to a crow – an avian so often cast with the pall of death.

Venus, meanwhile, sees a woman hold a glossy, pink conch shell – fleshy and open – before her face as if a beacon. The accompanying Birth of Venus is a still life comprising a conflation of symbologies and references. An overfilled champagne glass perches beside the aforementioned shell, a string of pearls draped across and within its span. It delves deep into both art and socio-feminist history. While the pearl has long invoked purity and femininity throughout mythology, the conch engenders that of fertility. But these works also echo with a more contemporary resonance – one perhaps found in second-wave feminism. While the champagne might be read as an allusion to upward mobility and financial independence, the string pearls almost resemble birth control pills (perhaps an allegory for the emancipation of the female reproductive organs?). In New Age, a jagged crystal takes the place of pubic hair, resting hard and sharp against the softness and fragility of the flesh. This symbol for healing only works to amplify the vulnerability of the body. That Hicks’ engages with such themes in 2013 points to the folly of complacency. The notion that we can sleep in the wake of feminism is bogus, null and void.

Indeed, Hicks’ retrieval and reinterpretation of mythologies and social precedents suggests that history repeats. While her images of children suggest minds unsullied by the scourge of learned prejudices and social mores, Venus and her like describe the continuum of the sexualised male gaze. That Hicks’ co-opts a visual language so often used to hock products and desires serves as the ultimate repost. Human complexity can continue to exist, even amid the cycle and the cynicism of the commercial artifice.

Installation views of Petrina Hicks: Selected Photographs, 2013 at Helen Gory Galerie
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
Enigma
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 100cm

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
The Hand That Feeds
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 220cm

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
The Beauty of History
2010
Pigment print, Edition of 8
85 x 85cm

Petrina Hicks (Australian, b. 1972)
New Age
2013
Pigment print, Edition of 8
100 x 220cm

Helen Gory Galerie

This gallery has now closed.

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Exhibition: ‘Troy Ruffels: Cinder’ at James Makin Gallery, Collingwood, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 13th June – 6th July, 2013

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Cicada
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
120 cm x 240cm
Edition of 3

This scratching away at reality. Abstractness of becoming.

Tension. Music. Light. Undertow.

1/ A current below the surface of the sea moving in the opposite direction to the surface current.

2/ An implicit quality, emotion, or influence underlying the surface aspects of something and leaving a particular impression.

Imagined, chthonian (of or relating to the underworld, from Greek khthonios, of the earth) landscape.

(Dis)possession of the land, as though the land is rebelling against subjective gaze of the viewer.

Prosaic titles (Bracken, Cinder, Rift) with a poetic zest (remains of the day).

Spaces of isolation / human marking (thumbprints on work) / absence / presence.

Manifestations of the mind.

The landscape as Other.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877)
The Wave
c. 1869

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972) 'Sea #3 (remains of the day)' 2013 from the exhibition 'Troy Ruffels: Cinder' at James Makin Gallery, Collingwood, Melbourne, June - July, 2013

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Sea #3 (remains of the day)
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Bracken
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Cinder
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Sea #4 (Second Winter)
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

This exhibition sees photo media artist Troy Ruffels employ innovative techniques to create his evocative imagery, which is heavily informed by the natural world. Ruffels has developed a unique process of drawing from multiple photographic source images to create each final work, which is subsequently printed using solvent based inks onto composite aluminium sheets, as opposed to standard archival papers. By utilising the reflective qualities of the aluminium Ruffels illuminates his intriguing landscape imagery with shifting light effects.

“Photo-media artist Troy Ruffels extends the boundaries of traditional photography towards a realm of limitless creative possibilities. Observing and recording sites within the Tasmanian wilderness and beyond, Ruffels draws from multiple source images to arrive at his final works. In doing so the artist weaves a highly personal and emotive response to various locations within the natural world that have remained lodged in his imagination. His process allows for a range of atmospheres and moods to be evoked, from a dreamlike softness, to a densely weighted gravity.

Overall the works in Cinder reflect a highly personal response to place, as in the process of revealing nature’s secrets the artist reveals a part of himself. Ruffels displays his impressive technical and creative prowess in transfiguring and reassembling the elements, blending fact with fiction to tell the understory of the night.” (Marguerite Brown, Cat. Essay JMG Journal, 2013)

Press release from the James Makin Gallery website

Installation view of 'Troy Ruffels: Cinder' at James Makin Gallery

Installation views of Troy Ruffels: Cinder at James Makin Gallery
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Etude No.9
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Rift
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Understory
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972)
Sea #1 (Arc)
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107cm
Edition of 12

James Makin Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: South Yarra and surrounds, 1994

June 2013

PLEASE NOTE: THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF MALE NUDITY – IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Stained glass, cracked
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.

All images © Marcus Bunyan. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image; remember these are just straight scans of the negatives !

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
White door 1
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Damien, 1994
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Night repair
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Jerry holding a brush, South Yarra
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Jerry behind safety screen, Punt Road, South Yarra
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Presence
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Nautilus shell in cup
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Jerry with shaved head
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Undergrowth
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
White door 2
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Damien sitting outside his flat, South Yarra, 1994
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Trees, capstone, shadows
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Damien with snake
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Glass bird, Punt Road, South Yarra
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Easter Sunday
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Capstone, night, Windsor train station
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Paul, cock on anvil
1994
Silver gelatin photograph

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive 1991-1997

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Review: ‘Lee Grant / Belco Pride’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 5th June – 22nd June 2013

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Belco Pride
2008
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

In Belco Pride, the photographer Lee Grant comes as close as you are ever likely to come to an Australian version of the American photographer Alec Soth (Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara). That is a great compliment indeed.

This is an intelligent, cohesive exhibition which features 5 large colour photographs and a grid of 3 x 9 smaller colour photographs that form a topographical map of a suburb in Canberra called Belconnen. The body of work investigates how humans inhabit a specific place and how that place in turn influences the formation of identity and a sense of belonging and community. These themes are set in the context of a shifting, migratory, multicultural Australian suburb. The photographs are beautifully shot and individually well resolved; these square photographs then go on to form a holistic body that gives the viewer a wonderful sense of the people and place being photographed.

Grant likes to shoot formally and frontally, but that does not mean that there is not subtly and humour present in these photographs. Technically she likes to vary depth of field to emphasise the context of place: in some images, for example Ashleigh in her Formal Dress (2008, below), depth of field is minimal in order to bring focus onto Ashleigh and the texture of her formal dress. The artist also likes to change light conditions from bright sunlight (Alisha and baby Saul, 2009 below), to overcast (Belco Pride, 2008 above) to gathering gloom (George with his model aeroplane, 2008 below); she also likes to push and pull figures and objects within the pictorial frame, from close up to mid-distance to infinity (the rendering of houses for example). This shading of space and tonality adds a beautiful luminosity to the series.

The humour and detail present is also fun: the suits of the sons two sizes too big in The Duot Family (2009, below); the barbed wire looming ominously above the white graffiti ‘Belco Pride’; the off kilter lamp post in Suburban Hedge (2008, below) being swallowed by the hedge; and the delicious way that the lead from Kiki travels down and trails along the ground to Chucky the dog. There is a real affection and affinity for this place and people that is expressed in these photographs. They are unusually contemplative for this type of photography and that is perhaps a reflection on Grant’s Korean-Australian heritage.

Other work on her website is a mixed bag: the Sudanese Portraits are very successful, reminding me of the work of Mali photographer Malick Sidibé, while Window on the Orient is interesting but the photographs are a little ‘flat’ due to their subject matter. The Road to Kuvera and Welcome to Vietnam lack the same connection and insight into the human condition that Belco Pride possesses, and this body of work seems to be her strongest so far in terms of an enunciation of her inner vision. I await new work with interest.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
The Duot Family
2009
Archival pigment print
110 x 110cm
Edition of 4 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Cactus Garden
2012
Archival pigment print
110 x 110cm
Edition of 4 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Ashleigh in her Formal Dress
2008
Archival pigment print
110 x 110cm
Edition of 4 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Suburban Hedge
2008
Archival pigment print
110 x 110cm
Edition of 4 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Graffheads
2009
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Roxy and Jess
2008
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Belco’s a hole… but it’s our hole.

I’ve been told that you never truly leave behind the place you grew up. That it remains deep within your experience of the world. Feeling conflicted about one’s place of origin is certainly not unique, but for me, the process of returning ‘home’ and reconciling my perception of place with its banal and vernacular reality was a surprising yet cathartic experience. The photographs in this series express the idea that belonging, connection and identity is deeply rooted in the specifics of one’s inhabited landscape. The landscape depicted here being the 25 northernmost suburbs of Canberra known as Belconnen, or to us locals, as ‘Belco’.

As a photographer, I am interested in the way migrant communities adapt to new environments, particularly in western cultures and much of my work explores themes of identity, belonging and community set often in the context of the Australian suburbs.

Lee Grant

“I always believed it was the things you don’t choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighbourhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they’d accomplished. The bodies around their souls, the cities wrapped around those. I lived on this block my whole life; most of these people have.”

Dennis Lehane

Lee Grant’s latest exhibition at Edmund Pearce, Belco Pride, explores how belonging, connection and identity is deeply rooted in the specifics of one’s inhabited landscape. The landscape depicted here being the 25 northernmost suburbs of Canberra known as Belconnen, or to the locals, as ‘Belco’.

Lee is a documentary photographer who lives and works in Canberra. She holds a degree in Anthropology and in 2010 completed a Master of Philosophy at the ANU School of Art. Lee has exhibited at the Australian Centre for Photography, the Monash Gallery of Art and the National Portrait Gallery amongst others. She has been a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize, the Head On Alternative Portrait Prize, the Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Prize and the Olive Cotton Award. Lee was also the winner of the prestigious Bowness Photography Prize in 2010. Her work is held in the National Library, the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery as well as numerous private collections.

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Kiki and Chucky
2008
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Nathan & Mac, BMX bros
2009
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
A View of Suburbia
2009
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Alisha and baby Saul
2009
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
George with his model aeroplane
2008
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Ginninderra Creek on a Winter’s morning
2008
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
The Beehive
2008
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Lee Grant (Australian, b. 1973)
Lee
2010
Archival pigment print
60 x 60cm
Edition of 8 + 2 AP

Edmund Pearce Gallery

This gallery is now closed.

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Exhibition: ‘Sophia Szilagyi: water studies’ at Beaver Galleries, Canberra

Exhibition dates: 23rd May – 11th June 2013

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
night waves I
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 2 of 15
29 x 29cm

“It is intangible, incalculable, a thing to be felt, not comprehended – a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart…”

John Ruskin, art critic

“Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm. Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm. One’s language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.”

David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

How appropriate that these stunning water studies by artist Sophia Szilagyi should be exhibited in Canberra as the blockbuster J. M. W. Turner exhibition Turner from the Tate: The Making of a Master opens at the National Gallery of Australia.

I love everything thing about these works: the compacted and layered sense of space (the eye of the printmaker brought to bare in the construction of the images rather than the eye of the photographer), the lack of a traditional vanishing point that allows the viewer to be immersed in the prints, the tonality, the texture and immediacy of the images. Szilagyi pushes the work to the limits and, amid the swirling masses of light and colour, a powerful mood is evoked.1 These towering, raging canvases portray the gathering force of the sea, its immediacy and energy; its danger, wonder and sublime beauty. They are as much landscapes of the mind and the imagination as of the sea. Turner, lashed to a mast during a furious storm so that he could later paint a representation of the storm, would surely have been proud of these meditations upon nature/life. Bravura. Bravo.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ See Grishin, Sasha. “Genius shows his true colours,” in The Age newspaper, Saturday, June 1, 2013, p. 2.

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

“Light shimmers, darkness settles, the sea opens its arms to swallow up the sky. Sophia Szilagyi’s imagery evokes the natural world and imbues it with an emotional resonance through the artist’s skilful manipulation of diametrically opposed elements. Light abuts dark, the dense almost claustrophobic space in some works contrast with open seas and vast skies that imply the infinite in others. Imagery is constructed through digital printmaking techniques, layered to create textural complexities, while capturing the oscillations in mood and atmosphere that mirror the ebb and flow of human emotions. Fear, wonder, and danger exist in these images that capture the beauty and grandeur found in the physical world, while also charting an internal topography.”

Marguerite Brown

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
stormy seas (after Courbet)
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 2 of 15
30 x 35cm

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
wave
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 9 of 20
49.5 x 57cm

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
breaking
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 4 of 10
96 x 122cm

Sophia Szilagyi is a printmaker who uses digital printmaking to create scenes of re-interpreted memory and experience. In her multi-layered compositions, Sophia explores the relationship between fiction and non-fiction, challenging our perceptions of reality and the effects of physical sensation and emotional response on memory. Sophia’s artistic process begins with an impression of a certain painting, personal photograph or experience. Images from a variety of sources are combined and overlapped so that the general interpretation of her work is a patchwork of real and imagined experiences. Sophia achieves this seamless layering by using digital technology, giving her the freedom to manipulate the imagery to create the desired mood and expression. The completed works are printed on archival rag paper as this highly absorbent surface enhances the softness and dreamlike quality of her imagery. In this current exhibition, Sophia draws her inspiration from the sea and coast, exploring the dualities of intersections between light and dark, earth and ocean. Through her prints, Sophia seeks to capture a sense of wonder, fear, beauty and, sometimes, danger that exists in both nature and the imagination.

Sophia Szilagyi graduated with First Class Honours from the School of Art and Culture at RMIT in 2000. Since graduating, Sophia has held a number of solo shows as well as participating in many group exhibitions across Australia. Her work has been selected in numerous print awards including the Fremantle Print Prize (2007) and the Banyule Award for Works on Paper (2011, 2009 and 2007). In 2005, Sophia was commissioned to complete a work for the Print Council of Australia and her work is represented in collections including the Burnie Regional Art Museum, La Trobe Regional Art Gallery, Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, Queensland University of Technology and State Library of Victoria.

Press release from Beaver Galleries

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
light sea
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 1 of 15

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
dark sea
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 1 of 15
22 x 22 cm

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
ocean view I
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 1 of 5
76 x 77cm

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
ocean view II
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 4 of 5
78 x 74cm

Sophia Szilagyi (Australian, b. 1973)
settling
2013
Pigment print on archival rag paper
Edition 2 of 10
80 x 70cm

Beaver Galleries
81 Denison Street
Deakin, Canberra
ACT 2600, Australia
Phone: 02 6282 5294

Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm

Beaver Galleries website

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Exhibition: ‘Pat Brassington: Quill’ at Bett Gallery, Hobart

Exhibition dates: 10 May – 31 May 2013

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Blink
2013
Pigment print
72 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Always enigmatic but slightly more accessible new work from Australia’s master of ambiguity Pat Brassington. Not that I would say that any of these images are really memorable in their own right but collectively they speak to the alienation of everyday life – alienation from Self, shadow and surroundings.

Marcus

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

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Candie
2013
Pigment print
60 x 44cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Deuce
2013
Pigment print
72 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Fathoms Deep
2013
Pigment print
72 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Masterclass
2013
Pigment print
72 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Matinee
2013
Pigment print
72 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Mind Game
2013
Pigment print
60 x 46cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Quicksilver
2013
Pigment print
60 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Shadow Boxer
2013
Pigment print
72 x 50cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
The Guest
2013
Pigment print
60 x 44cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Pat Brassington (Australian, b. 1942)
Untitled
2013
Pigment print, unframed
90 x 65cm (paper size)
edition of 8

Bett Galllery
65 Murray Street
Hobart Tas 7000
Australia
Phone: +61 (0) 3 6231 6511

Opening hours:
Monday – Friday 10am – 5.30pm
Saturday 10am – 4pm
Closed Sundays

Bett Gallery website

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Review: ‘Aliza Levi / Books on a White Background’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 10th April – 4th May 2013

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Across Australia
2011
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aura of white

Shadow of black

Books for the boys *

Black bodies out the back

* Books for the bourgeois

* Books for the parlour

* Books for the burning

* Books to hide memories

* Books lost in archives

* Books still in libraries

* Books for the tower (implying Babel)

* Books for the scrapheap

* Books for academics

* Books for the garbo

* Books for the church stall

* Books to forget

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Australia, its History and Present Condition
2013
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Australia the Land of Promise
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Black But Comely
2013
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Malthus on Population
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

“I began this series by choosing books that reflected the assumptions and behaviour of the nineteenth century colonists, the persistent notations of self and other. I soon started to notice, that many of the titles were pertinent to today. A blurring of time and relevance, where views from a hundred years ago were intersecting with current attitudes and events.”

Aliza Levi

South African born artist, Aliza Levi premiers her latest body of work Books on a White Background at Edmund Pearce Gallery. Camera and lights in hand, Aliza has been photographing nineteenth century books in small town junk shops, second-hand book dealers, flea markets, rare book collections and libraries both here and in her native South Africa. Books authored by anthropologists, ethnologists and laypersons who took it upon themselves to comment on their travels. To date she has captured nearly 250 books.

The books, were initially chosen to reflect the ideologies and assumptions of the nineteenth century West. However, Aliza soon realised, that some of the titles were pertinent to today. A blurring of time and relevance where titles from a hundred years ago were intersecting with current attitudes and events. For example, the book Strangers May be Present, in its evocation of colonial settlers viewing the other as stranger also evoked for her the more recent, disturbing events in which the other is articulated: xenophobic attacks and corrective rapes in South Africa. Closer to home, the century old book entitled Australia, the Land of Promise immediately raises questions around certain stark realities such as refugee detention centres.

Kate Warren writes in the accompanying exhibition essay: “The precise regularity of her photographic compositions create a compelling visual plane that immediately draws the viewer’s attention. But look closer. In the situation that Levi presents us with, the seductive nature of the visual cannot escape the immediacy of language. The force of their titles – often starkly confronting and potentially upsetting – leaves the embossing, decoration and materiality of the books themselves as an ironic supplement.”

Born in 1969 in South Africa, Aliza Levi’s practice is multidisciplinary in form yet single-minded in concept. Much of her work presents a relationship to land, consciousness and memory brought on by her South African and Australian citizenship. Having recently presented her work in the UK, this is her first solo show in Melbourne, where she has been producing art as well as facilitating women’s art groups with refugees from Sudan. Levi is currently completing a Masters Degree in Fine Art at Monash University.

Press release from the Edmund Pearce Gallery website

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Ourselves Writ Strange
2011
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Scenes and Sports of Savage Lands
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
Strangers May Be Present
2010
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
The Art of Living in Australia
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Textual thresholds: The uncomfortable nature of titles in Books on a White Background

Kate Warren

Aliza Levi’s research-based photographic project, Books on a White Background (2012), confronts the viewer with an array that is at once visually compelling and profoundly difficult to look at. The precise regularity of her photographic compositions, the ‘grid-like’ repetition of these images’ installation, the consistent form and shape of her subject matter, and the contrast between the stark white background and the darker shadows thrown, all create a compelling visual plane that immediately draws the viewer’s attention. But look closer. In the situation that Levi presents us with, the seductive nature of the visual cannot escape the immediacy of language. The force of their titles – often starkly confronting and potentially upsetting – leaves the embossing, decoration and materiality of the books themselves as an ironic supplement.

This is not a ‘library’. Although developed from Levi’s archival research, the final photographic project is not an ‘archive’. Rather than displaying the original books themselves as objets trouvés, Levi disavows their materiality and tactility. Photographing the books’ ‘spines’, she not only flattens but removes entirely from view their ‘flesh’ the pages and the content – and in doing so opens up a liminal space that can accommodate and illuminate a multiplicity of (sometimes uncomfortable) and connections between the past and the present.

In the human form, our spines form the connection between the psychical realm of our brains and the physicality of our bodies; between our ‘inner’ subjectivity and our ‘outer’ ability to move, communicate and interact with our surroundings. Likewise in the case of the books that Levi photographs; the spines and titles are liminal spaces that mediate their content and the cultural and historical contexts in which they exist. Gérard Genette calls this the ‘paratext’, the “fringe [which] constitutes a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public.” Levi’s project works at this juncture. By denying access to the detailed substance and content of these books she denies their overt ‘authority’, yet at the same time she reveals uncomfortable legacies that persist and cannot be wholly escaped.

The various ‘post’ discourses (post-colonialism, post-structuralism, post-modernism) and their influential theorists and practitioners have done enormous amounts of work to deconstruct and destabilise dominant narratives and histories. The process is necessarily ongoing and open-ended; because although many narratives that were once unquestioned have been removed from their dominance and acceptability, it is often through language that their traces and legacies remain.

Thus in the selection of Australian books included in this exhibition, there emerges jarring and disturbing contrasts between titles that clearly belie values that are no longer widely accepted (such as The Aboriginal as Human Being), and other titles which still resonate with national myths (such as Australia the Land of Promise). Other titles like Ourselves Writ Large and The Gulf Between become more ambiguous; for without access to the specificities of their content, these books’ paratexts are revealed in Levi’s project as (necessarily) multifaceted signifiers. They immediately open up a ‘zone of transaction’ that reveals the past as an immanent presence, constantly transformed by and transforming of the present. These now abstracted titles retain a force and power to reveal uncomfortable truths and forgotten narrative tropes, speaking to the way that Australian history and presumed cultural values are constructed and repeated in our contemporary life.

Kate Warren would like to thank Aliza Levi for the stimulating and ongoing discussions; and David Wlazlo for his timely and astute insights.

Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 2.

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
The Aboriginal as Human Being
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
The Gulf Between
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
The Report of the Aborigines Committee of the Meeting for Sufferings 1840
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Aliza Levi (South African, b. 1969)
White Settlers and Native Peoples
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42cm

Edmund Pearce Gallery

This gallery is no longer open.

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Ignudi’, 1994

April 2013

PLEASE NOTE: THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF MALE NUDITY – IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled
1994
From the series Ignudi
Silver gelatin photograph

This series of photographs is a reconceptualisation of Michelangelo’s Ignudi from the Sistine Chapel. The Ignudi (singular: ignudo, from the Italian adjective nudo, meaning “naked”) are the 20 athletic, nude male figures that Michelangelo painted at the four corners of the five smaller scenes of Creation. Recontextualising the figures implicitly fetches elements from other texts, the meaning of the male body based on its meaning in other contexts and ages (beauty, desire, homoeroticism, nudity, power of the body/phallus), realising a continual unfolding of texts, discourses and conversations in a field of production.

These prints are incredibly rare. There are probably 3 vintage photographs on fibre-base paper of each image at 12″ x 16″ size.

All images © Marcus Bunyan. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image; remember these are just straight scans of the negatives !