Rennie Ellis ArchiveArt Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition and book launch preview: ‘THE RENNIE ELLIS SHOW’ and ‘Decadent 1980-2000’ at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 3rd April – 8th June 2014
Exhibition and book launch: 3-5 pm Saturday 5th April 2014

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Fully equipped, Albert Park Beach
c.1981, printed later
Digital colour print
© Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

I saw a digital preview of the new book Rennie Ellis – Decadent 1980-2000, shown to me by the delightful Director of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive, Manuela Furci – and I must say I was mighty impressed… it was absolutely, colourfully, outrageously FAB !

My god Rennie Ellis was a fantastic artist, what an eye, and what a sense of humour he imparts in his work. And in colour this time. The exhibition draws work from BOTH books – Decade 1970-1980 and Decadent 1980-2000. The colour images in the posting are from the Decadent book and are also in the exhibition. Do come along to the opening and book launch… it will be a solid gold event!

Marcus

Many thankx to Manuel Furci and the Rennie Ellis Archive for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Without my photography life would be boring. Photography adds an extra dimension to my life. Somehow it confirms my place in the world”

Rennie Ellis

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Berlin Party, Inflation, Melbourne
c. 1981, printed later
Digital colour print
© Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis Decade 1970-1980 and Decadent 1980-2000

The photographer Rennie Ellis (1940-2003) is a key figure in Australian visual culture. Ellis is best remembered for his effervescent observations of Australian life during the 1970s-90s, including his now iconic book Life is a beach. Although invariably inflected with his own personality and wit, the thousands of social documentary photographs taken by Ellis during this period now form an important historical record.

The Rennie Ellis Show highlights some of the defining images of Australian life from the 1970s and ’80s. This is the period of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke; AC/DC and punk rock; cheap petrol and coconut oil; Hare Krishnas and Hookers and Deviant balls.

This exhibition of over 100 photographs provides a personal account of what Ellis termed ‘a great period of change’. Photographs explore the cultures and subcultures of the period, and provide a strong sense of a place that now seems worlds away, a world free of risk, of affordable inner city housing, of social protest, of disco and pub rock, of youth and exuberance.

Text from the MGA website

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Dining Out, Inflation
1980, printed later
Selenium-toned silver gelatin print
© Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
At the Pub, Brisbane
1982, printed later
Selenium-toned silver gelatin print
© Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive

Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Level 1 / 26 Acland Street
St Kilda 3182
Victoria, Australia
Phone: +61 3 9525 3862
E: info@RennieEllis.com.au

Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive website

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

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

Monash Gallery of Art website

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Exhibition preview: ‘Out of the closets, into the streets: gay liberation photography 1971-73’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: Tuesday 22nd July – Saturday 26th July, 2014

Opening: Tuesday 22nd July 6-8pm
Nite Art: Wednesday 23rd July until 11pm
Artists represented: Philip Potter, John Storey, John Englart, Barbara Creed, Ponch Hawkes, Rennie Ellis

Curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan and Nicholas Henderson

Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003)
Confrontation, Gay Pride Week Picnic, Botanical Gardens 1973
1973, printed 2014
Silver gelatin photograph
© Rennie Ellis

Five days, that’s all you’ve got! Just five days to see this fabulous exhibition, so make a note of it now in your diaries…

The exhibition Out of the closets, into the streets: gay liberation photography 1971-73 pictures the very beginning of the gay liberation movement in Australia through the work of Philip Potter, John Storey, John Englart, Barbara Creed, Ponch Hawkes and Rennie Ellis. The exhibition examines for the first time images from the period as works of art as much as social documents. The title of the exhibition is a slogan from the period.

As gay people found their voice in the early 1970s artists, often at the very beginning of their careers, were there to capture meetings in lounge rooms, consciousness raising groups and street protests. The liberation movement meant ‘being there’, putting your body on the line. “It was a key feature of the new left that this embodied politics couldn’t stop in the streets: that is, the public arena as conventionally understood. ‘Being there’ politically also applied to households, classrooms, sexual relations, workplaces and the natural environment.”1

Curated by Dr Marcus Bunyan and Nicholas Henderson and with a catalogue essay by Professor Dennis Altman, the show is a stimulating experience for those who want to be inspired by the history and art of the early gay liberation movement in Australia.

The exhibition coincides with AIDS 2014: 20th International AIDS Conference (20-25 July 2014) and Nite Art which occurs on the Wednesday night (23rd July 2014). The exhibition will travel to Sydney to coincide with the 14th Australia’s Homosexual Histories Conference in November at a venue yet to be confirmed.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Connell, Raewyn. “Ours is in colour: the new left of the 1960s,” in Carolyn D’Cruz and Mark Pendleton (eds.,). After Homosexual: The Legacies of Gay Liberation. Perth: UWA Publishing, 2013, p. 43.

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

From a series of photographs of the very first gay rights demonstration which attracts 70 people outside NSW Liberal Party headquarters in support of the pre-selection of Tom Hughes against a right wing challenge following his support for homosexual law reform.

Unknown artist
Cricket is homosexual!
Melbourne, c. 1971-1973, printed 2014
Giclee print on Hahnemuhle william turner 310gsm
© Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives

Barbara Creed (Australian, b. 1943)
Stills from a Super 8mm film of a Women’s Liberation march
Melbourne, 1973, printed 2014
Still from a Super 8mm film
Digital C type print on Kodak Endura Matte
© Barbara Creed

Still from a super 8mm movie of a Women’s Liberation march, Melbourne, 1973.

John Storey (Australian, 1950-2019)
I am a Lesbian and Beautiful
1971, printed 2014
Digital C type print on Kodak Endura Matte
© John Storey

Phillip Potter (Australian)
Policeman reading ‘Camp Ink’ magazine
1971, printed 2014
Digital C type print on Kodak Endura Matte
© Phillip Potter