Exhibition: ‘Density’ by Andrew Follows, curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan, at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond

Exhibition dates: 27th August – 21st September 2013

Curator: Marcus Bunyan

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019) 'Elevation, Doreen' 213 from the exhibition 'Density' by Andrew Follows at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond, August - September, 2013

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Elevation, Doreen
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

A wonderful exhibition by vision impaired photographer Andrew Follows at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond. It has been a real pleasure to mentor Andrew over the past year and to see the fruits of our labour is incredibly satisfying. The images are strong, elemental, atmospheric, immersive. Due to the nature of Andrew’s tunnel vision there are hardly any traditional vanishing points within the images, instead the ‘plane of existence’ envelops you and draws you in.

Well done to everyone involved with the project. I would particularly like to thank Fiona Cook from Arts Access Victoria for keeping the project on track; the amazing Darren from CPL Digital for his most excellent efforts to print the almost impossible print; Jondi Keane from Deakin University for opening the exhibition; Anna Briers for writing a wonderful catalogue essay; and Anita Traverso for believing in Andrew and giving him an exhibition when many wouldn’t. Many thankx and respect to all.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

The photographs below appear in the order they are in the exhibition. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Density n.

The degree of optical opacity of a medium or material, as of a photographic negative;

Thickness of consistency;

Complexity of structure or content.

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019) 'Number 31, Eltham' 2013 from the exhibition 'Density' by Andrew Follows at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond, August - September, 2013

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Number 31, Eltham
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Green, Montsalvat
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Shadowlife
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Garland, South Melbourne
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
40 cm x 27cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Indigo, Edenvale
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5 cm

The Mind’s Eye: Density in the Work of Andrew Follows

Anna Briers

Seeing has never been about the simple act of looking. It can be defined by the parameters of our past experience and cognitive stock, factors which enable, inhibit and shape our perceptive abilities. Ultimately, our ways of seeing are affected by our learnt cultural assumptions about the universe.1

Cultural theorist James Elkins has said, ‘blindness is not the opposite of vision, but it’s constant companion, and even the foundation of seeing itself.’2 In his seminal text The Object Stares Back, Elkins illustrates that we are blind to the limits of our own vision and that this unknowingness about our visual fallibilities is crucial to ordinary seeing. This blindness relates to a hierarchy of vision, defined not only by our psychological limitations but our physiological ones as well – the selection process that we employ to filter the vast proliferating output of information that we are inundated with on a daily basis. Without which, we would probably experience a kind of cerebral meltdown.

If vision is dependent on a certain amount of blindness, then by extension the notion that a photographic image can accurately document the truth is a misconception. The camera is not simply a black box that can correctly capture a quotation of reality, a machine of ‘logic and light’,3 for the act of taking a photograph is reliant on the careful selection and framing of a particular object or subject. The result of this point of view is the depiction of a subjective reality at the exclusion of everything else which is made invisible: eliminated by the perimeters of the frame.

In this context, it is interesting to consider the work of legally blind photographer Andrew Follows. Follows has a degenerative condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) that has rendered one eye completely blind with ever diminishing tunnel vision in the other. Follows can perceive three meters ahead, albeit through an obscuring haze. The clarity of his vision is dependent on lighting and various environmental factors; objects are often more perceptible at night. Whilst form and structure are apparent, he cannot see the intricate tonal details of a stained glass window. He cannot know that the colour of your scarf is royal blue. All this changes however, when Follows observes light flooding through the lens of a camera.

Through the small rectangular viewing panel on the reverse of a digital camera, Follows’ world is revealed. He is able to discern architectural detail and the vibrancy of nature; he is able to know that his favourite shade in the vast tonal spectrum is royal blue. In a realisation of Marshall McLuhan’s notion of the camera as a prosthetic extension,4 Follows’ camera extends his sight, and through it he is able to capture his unique vision, for a moment or for a millennia, a physical expression of the imaginings of his mind’s eye.

Curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan, the concept of Density was envisaged as a point of departure to explore the manifold variations and subsequent ruminations on the term as it relates to Follows’ perspective. As a technical descriptive, density explains the degree of optical opacity within a photographic negative. Portions of film that have been exposed to greater amounts of light yield a greater deposit of reduced silver. This is referred to as having a higher density than areas of shadow.5

Density also denotes a thickness of consistency and many of Follows’ works exhibit a complexity of compositional structure and content that elucidates the nature of Follows’ perception. ‘Even in the physicality of my vision, these photographs have a certain feeling that reflects my relationship to the world and how I visualise it.’6 A thematic constant that binds this series together is the shallow depth of field that is combined with a sense of the frame or the foreground being the view. Follows’ images, and therefore our view into his world is a restricted one. As the viewer we must frequently gaze through a kind of haze or obstruction in order to participate.

A pivotal example of this is Elevation, Doreen, 2013, where the composition is segmented by the skeletal structure of the wooden and steel supports of a building. Intersecting diagonals and verticals delineate and contain space across the picture plane, framing the mid-ground and background within its architecture. It is not the vista that is of interest to Follows.

This image cannot escape the requisite art historic parallels with movements such as the Russian Constructivists or De Stijl with its ‘Mondrian-esque’ all over composition. However the image speaks of interiority, its emphasis is on the foreground and by drawing our attention to the mechanics of how the view is framed we are made conscious of the act of seeing. There is a layering or doubling that occurs here: Follows makes us aware of the limitations of our own vision, through the act of looking – by revealing his unique vision, as a result of partial blindness.

Similarly, Void, Eltham, 2013, leaves us grasping for some semblance of illumination and visual clarity within a desolate and dimly lit car park. While our eye is guided across the picture plane by white lines and columns that recede into space, our view is ultimately obstructed by a concrete barrier covered in territorial markings and thus, we are reminded of the limitations of our own vision as we are left to gaze into the dense abyss.

A thematic constant in Follows’ images such as No. 31 Eltham, 2013, is that they resist a singular point of perspective as evidenced by early Renaissance painters where everything was centred on the eye of the beholder; the visible world arranged for the spectator as the universe was once thought to be arranged for God.7 By contrast, many photos evidence a planar sense of spatiality. Often lacking in a noticeable vanishing point, his images have an immersive potential and we are drawn into the various densities within Follows’ shallow depth of field. This is exemplified by the rich textures of Scarp face, Beechworth, 2013, and the lush grassland depicted in Green, Montsalvat, 2013.

Many of the photographs in Density instill a quiet contemplative mood that is partially evoked by a muted tonal palette. Yet within this visionary series the viewer can also bear witness to the reoccurrence of otherworldly imagery, as well as transient and transformational spaces. This sense is further enhanced by the fact that Follows’ photographs are often shot at times when the light is fleeting, on the interstice of night and day. This is exemplified by Green on Blue, 2013, where Follows captures a train in motion, conveying a temporality and flux that eloquently describes a state of transience: of being between spaces, neither here nor there.

With Judges Chair, Beechworth, 2013, Follows conveys the courtroom where infamous Australian Bushranger Ned Kelly was committed to stand trial for murder, prior to his eventual hanging in 1880. The image pervades an institutional formality that is intensified by a classically balanced composition, combined with ominous historical undertones. Yet the space depicted is interrupted by the glimmer of an ethereal light that bolts across the far wall, puncturing the image. Alternative possibilities become illuminated and a sense of otherworldliness becomes palpable.

Hillock No’s 1-3, Windsor, conveys the everyday subject matter of a BMX bike park. Photographed at night utilising the urban ambience of streetlights, the mounds of earth are lit by unearthly glow. Under the gaze of Andrew Follows, the site is infused with an eerie quality. No longer a metropolitan playground, it resembles the desertous territories of an alien landscape, perhaps on some other planetary body or far distant moon.

As Elkins said, blindness is not the opposite of sight, but it’s constant companion. It is therefore, not sight that is required to take a great photograph – it is vision. By using the camera as a prosthetic extension through which he is able to perceive and frame the universe, Follows’ photographs expound the limitations and fallibilities of our own ways of seeing. Moreover, he is able to reveal to us the uniqueness of his subjective view – forged from the rich imaginings of his mind’s eye.

Anna Briers independent writer and curator, Melbourne 2013

Endnotes

1/ Berger, John. Ways of seeing: based on the BBC television series. London: British Broadcasting Corporation; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, p. 11.

2/ Elkins, James. The object stares back: on the nature of seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

3/ Elkins, James. What photography is. New York: Routledge, 2011

4/ McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding media: the extensions of man. London: Routledge, 2001. p. 210.

5/ Adams, Ansel. The negative: exposure and development. Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Morgan & Morgan, 1968.

6/ Quote drawn from artist’s statement.

7/ Berger, Op. cit., p. 16.

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Green on blue
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
157.3 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Scarp face, Beechworth
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
30 cm x 30cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Judge’s Chair, Beechworth
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
90 cm x 60cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Void, Eltham
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
90 cm x 60cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Hillock No.1, Windsor
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Hillock No.2, Windsor
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Hillock No.3, Windsor
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
130 cm x 86.5cm

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Torso, Eltham
2013
Digital photograph on archival cotton rag
14 cm x 20cm

Anita Traverso Gallery

This gallery has now closed

Anita Traverso Gallery website

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Opening speech: ‘John Cato Retrospective’ and book launch

Exhibition dates: 17th August – 15th September, 2013

“… in my memory John was a teacher determined to seek out the aptitudes and endowments of each student who came before him; his teaching and mentorship involved a deep empathy with each student’s approach. He was almost clairvoyant in being able to very quickly identify one’s strengths and it was on those he would concentrate, unafraid to express criticism; but only in terms of how a certain fault might detract from a strength. Such was his positive and affirming approach to teaching, and consequently we have each been left a different and very personal perception of what he valued in photography.”

Dr James McArdle

Read my opening speech to the ‘John Cato Retrospective’ exhibition and book launch

Read my chapter “… and his forms were without number,” in the book John Cato: A Retrospective of the Photographic Work 1971-1991

Photographers David Callow and Andrew Chapman’s video tribute to John Cato (18 mins 39 secs) can be viewed on Vimeo (Password is Cato)

Ballarat International Foto Biennale
12 Lydiard St North, Ballarat 3350

Ballarat International Foto Biennale website

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Opening speech: ‘John Cato Retrospective’ and book launch at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale by Dr Marcus Bunyan

“Cato was one of the first Australian photographers to create musical tone-poems – not traditional photo-essays as for magazines, but spiritual expositions about Self.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 17th August – 15th September, 2013

Opening: 17th August 2013

Installation photograph of the exhibition John Cato Retrospective at the Mining Exchange, Ballarat
Photograph by Marcus Bunyan
© Marcus Bunyan, John Cato family and Ballarat International Foto Biennale

It was an emotional time on Saturday afternoon as I opened the John Cato Retrospective. I hope I did John and Dawn, their family and everyone proud. I burst into tears after the speech… I got a lovely email from Senga Peckham today which was very much appreciated:

“Dear Marcus

Thank you so much for your excellent speech on Saturday. It was strong, heartfelt and beautiful.

Up there with the microphone you were probably not aware of the sentiment in the space. Many tears were shed. The grand daughters were so happy to be there. They were near me during your talk and extremely emotional. Many others were too. It was more of a wake really than an exhibition opening and book launch. Some people had travelled a long way and everyone wanted to be there. The warmth and tenderness was palpable and will be remembered for a long time.

Thank you for being such a major part of it and for putting your heart into each word.

Senga Peckham”

Many thankx to BIFB for asking me to officially open the John Cato Retrospective and to launch the new book.

Photographers David Callow and Andrew Chapman’s video tribute to John Cato (18 mins 39 secs) can be viewed on Vimeo (Password is Cato).

Read my chapter in the John Cato Retrospective book.

John Cato Retrospective opening speech

It is a great pleasure to be here today to officially open the John Cato Retrospective and to launch a book that will have a major contribution to a continuing assessment of John’s work and is also an honouring, a mark of respect and admiration. These brief words are not about the many sides of John and all his aspects and careers – for that you will have to look elsewhere – but they are a short introduction to the personal and wider cultural need for John’s work.

My friendship with John and Dawn goes back to when I was studying photography at RMIT University in the early 1990s. John became a mentor when I held my first three solo photography exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery and Workshop in Punt Road between 1991 and 1994. After I had finished my Phd in 2001, I co-curated a retrospective of his work at the very same gallery.

Many a weekend my partner and I travelled down to Carrum to see John and Dawn for lunch and afternoon tea, to talk about the things that matter in life – music, literature, art, love, loss – and to talk about my latest prints. They were the most glorious couple with such wonderful energy and they were so generous with their friendship and advice. John could smell bullshit a mile away and he would tell you, but he would also encourage you to look deeper into yourself and the world for the answers you were seeking. As James McArdle said to me recently, “He was a teacher determined to seek out the aptitudes and endowments of each student who came before him; his teaching and mentorship involved a deep empathy with each student’s approach. He was almost clairvoyant in being able to very quickly identify one’s strengths and it was on those he would concentrate, unafraid to express criticism; but only in terms of how a certain fault might detract from a certain strength.”1

And I will add, all of this with a warmth and affection that opened up a pathway to his insights.

John had strength of character in spades, always backed up by the vivacious Dawn. Imagine having a successful commercial career in Melbourne in the 1960s and giving it all away – to become an artist, a photographic artist at that! Imagine the courage it would have taken, in that time and place, to abandon all that had been successful in your life and follow another path, a path full of doubt and self-discovery, a journey that ultimately enabled him to help others through his teaching. As Ian Lobb said to me recently, “In 1970 where did you go to see a fine art photograph on exhibition in a non-institutional gallery in Melbourne? The only place was the doorway to the John Cato / Athol Shmith / Paul Barr studio in Collins Street. You would never know which of the three photographers would have a print placed in that doorway.”

According to Helen Ennis there has always been a distaste for self-reflective and contemplative modes of thinking in Australia, and photography has overwhelmingly been about ‘things’, “including actions and events, which have a concrete reality and a verifiable, independent existence… For most of the twentieth century inward-looking approaches, whether symbolist, surrealist or abstract, never really took hold.”2

John’s work is different. He was a groundbreaking artist. He was one of the first Australian photographers to create musical tone-poems – not traditional photo-essays as for magazines, but spiritual expositions about Self. In his internal meditation upon subject matter his concern was for the ‘felt’ landscape. He sought to express his relationship with the earth, air and water, aware of the contradictions in contemporary settler relations with the land. His photographs are not about the ‘when’ or ‘where’ but about a feeling in relation to the land, the spirit and the universe.

In this sense (that the photograph is always written by the photographer), these are photographs of the mind as much as they are of the landscape. John exposes himself as much as the landscape he is photographing. This is his spirit in relation to the land, to the cosmos, even. Like Monet’s paintings of water lilies these photographs are a “small dreaming” of his spirit with a section of the land and not necessarily, as in Aboriginal art, a dreaming and connection to the whole land. His photographs are photographs of the imagination as much as they are of place, rid of ego and become just the world. He created visions that placed the individual in harmony with the earth and in the process became not just a citizen of Australia but also a citizen of the world.

In this transformative act the artist not only awakens the reasoning mind but more importantly the soul. This is what John’s work does; it awakens the soul. His Alcheringa, his dreaming (for that is what Alcheringa means), was to pursue poetic truth in the world and it is his “gift” to us, to those that remain looking at his work. John commented that he would rather have questions than answers – I’m sure he would want to say that, and he would want to believe it – but it is my feeling that very deep down he was searching for the more beautiful answer – rather than just the beautiful question.

A very good friend of mine asked me recently whether I thought that John Cato was a great photographer. I have been thinking about that question ever since and my answer is this: he was a great photographer, one of Australia’s greatest, a great teacher and together with the sparkly-eyed Dawn, a wonderful human being. One measure of a photographer’s greatness is the amount of time he is prepared to spend helping others, and John spent a lot of time imparting his hard-earned wisdom.

As an artist, John has for too long been ignored by notable institutions that cannot accept the wonder in his work. There is an inexplicable coolness toward John and guardedness when talking about his work, as though people are afraid of saying anything about it at all. Well, let me say it for them: John’s work is magnificent. It is to the great credit of the people who have organised this exhibition and the publication of this book that finally, John might start to get the recognition he so strongly deserves.

John Cato unquestionably deserves a place in the pantheon of significant and influential Australian photographers for he is right up there with the very best of them. May the cosmos bless him.

Footnotes

1/ James McArdle email to the author 28th July 2013

2/ Ennis, Helen. “Introduction,” in Ennis, Helen. Photography and Australia. London: Reaktion Books, 2007, p. 9.

Installation photographs of John Cato Retrospective at the Mining Exchange, Ballarat
Photographs by Marcus Bunyan
© Marcus Bunyan, John Cato family and Ballarat International Foto Biennale

John Cato Retrospective book cover

Read my chapter in the book

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Ballarat International Foto Biennale
12 Lydiard St North, Ballarat 3350

Ballarat International Foto Biennale website

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Invitation to opening: ‘Density’ by Andrew Follows, curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan at Anita Traverso Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne

Date: Saturday 31st August, 2013, 3.30 – 5pm

Curator: Marcus Bunyan

Andrew Follows. 'Density' invitation 2013

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Density invitation
2013

density n.

the degree of optical opacity of a medium or material, as of a photographic negative; thickness of consistency; complexity of structure or content.

I welcome all friends to the opening of the first exhibition I have curated since the completion of my Master of Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne.

You are cordially invited to the opening of Density, a solo exhibition of photographs by Andrew Follows on Saturday 31st August 3.30 – 5pm at The Anita Traverso Gallery, 7 Albert Street Richmond, Victoria.

The works premiered in this exhibition are the culmination of a mentorship between Dr Marcus Bunyan and Andrew Follows, supported by Arts Access Victoria as part of the Boost Pathways Program.

“Curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan, the concept of Density was envisaged as a point of departure to explore the manifold variations and subsequent ruminations on the term as it relates to Follows’ perspective. As a technical descriptive, density explains the degree of optical opacity within a photographic negative. Portions of film that have been exposed to greater amounts of light yield a greater deposit of reduced silver. This is referred to as having a higher density than areas of shadow. Density also denotes a thickness of consistency and many of Follows’ works exhibit a complexity of compositional structure and content that elucidates the nature of Follows’ perception.”

Anna Briers. “The Mind’s Eye: Density in the Work of Andrew Follows.” Catalogue essay 2013

Curator: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Guest Speaker: 4pm Dr Jondi Keane, Senior Lecturer Deakin University
Artists Floor Talk: 3pm Saturday 7 September
Preview from Tuesday 27 August
Exhibition until Saturday 21 September
Gallery Hours Wed-Sat 11-5 + by appointment

The Opening will be Auslan Interpreted and the exhibition will be Audio Described.

Please click on the images below for a larger version.

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Density invitation
2013

Andrew Follows. 'Density' catalogue cover 2013

Andrew Follows (Australian, d. 2019)
Density catalogue cover
2013

Anita Traverso Gallery

This gallery is now closed.

Anita Traverso Gallery website

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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, metaphorically, 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

Papapetrou curator: Professor Anne Marsh in consultation with the artist

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Drag queen wearing cut out dress' 1993 from the exhibition Polixeni Papapetrou 'A Performative Paradox' at the CCP, Melbourne, May - 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 from the exhibition Polixeni Papapetrou 'A Performative Paradox' at the CCP, Melbourne, May - July, 2013

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' from the exhibition 'After Images' by Daniel von Sturmer at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), May - July, 2013

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 from the exhibition 'Petrina Hicks: Selected Photographs, 2013' at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran, Melbourne, June - 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 from the exhibition 'Petrina Hicks: Selected Photographs, 2013' at Helen Gory Galerie, Prahran, Melbourne, June - July, 2013

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 view of 'Petrina Hicks: Selected Photographs, 2013' at Helen Gory Galerie

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

Curator: Dr. Troy Ruffels alongside accompanying catalogue text written by arts writer and curator Marguerite Brown

Troy Ruffels (Australian, b. 1972) 'Cicada' 2013 from the exhibition 'Troy Ruffels: Cinder' at James Makin Gallery, Collingwood, Melbourne, June - 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 from the exhibition 'Lee Grant / Belco Pride' at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, 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 give 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 these 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 from the exhibition 'Lee Grant / Belco Pride' at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne, June 2013

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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