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.
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.
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) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958) Untitled 1994 From the series Ignudi Silver gelatin photograph
Curator: Dr. Susan Cohn for the Design Museum, London
Installation photograph of the exhibition Unexpected Pleasures at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
An elegant, refined exhibition of contemporary jewellery at the National Gallery of Victoria’s newly redeveloped Contemporary Exhibitions space. The most striking and beautiful pieces are the neck ornaments. I am a very much over some of the relatively unstructured jewellery made out of found objects. It really has been done to death.
Trying to take photographs of jewellery in cases with reflections and extraneous light is very difficult but I hope my photographs below give you an idea of the design, installation and some specific pieces in the exhibition.
Susanne Klemm (Swiss, b. 1965) Frozen (installation view) 2007 Polyolefin Courtesy of Anna Schwartz Gallery Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Lisa Walker (New Zealand, b. 1967) Necklace (installation view) 2009 Plastic, thread Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Beverley Price Nespresso Collier (installation view) 2012 Anodised aluminium, plastic coated wire, fine gold Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Gijs Bakker (Dutch, b. 1942) Shoulder piece (installation view) 1967 Anodised aluminium Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Unexpected Pleasures: The Art and Design of Contemporary Jewellery displays over 200 works by important Australian and international contemporary jewellers who have pushed conceptual and material boundaries within their practices. This Design Museum, London exhibition is curated by Guest Curator and Melbourne jeweller Susan Cohn, and is complemented by a selection of NGV Collection works and private loans.
Unexpected Pleasures looks at what we mean by jewellery from a number of different perspectives. Taking as its starting point the radical experiments of the Contemporary Jewellery Movement that challenged a conventional understanding of the language of personal adornment, and looking instead at the essential meanings of jewellery, the exhibition brings together important work from around the world, and looks at it from the point of view of the wearer as well as the maker. Contemporary Jewellery in this sense is at the intersection of art and design.
Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said: “This is a remarkable and exciting exhibition, brilliantly installed in the Gallery’s newly redeveloped Contemporary Exhibitions space at NGV International.”
The exhibition explores the essential meanings of jewellery, bypassing traditional perceptions and instead tracing the radical experiments of contemporary jewellers who have challenged the conventions of jewellery design. The exhibition is curated through a number of themes: Worn Out – celebrating the experience of wearing jewellery; Linking Links – looking at the ways in which ‘meaning’ and narratives are invested and expressed through sub-themes such as Social Expressions and Creative Systems, and; A Fine Line – offering insight into the origins of contemporary jewellery today, highlighting key instigators of the Contemporary Jewellery Movement that started in the late 1970s.
Each theme within the exhibition provides an outline of current thinking and offers a unique view on how people use and interact with objects, through which design and production processes come to light. Photography in this context becomes a vital instrument for expressing the ‘wearability’ and the performative aspects of jewellery, and a selection of photographic works are also included in the exhibition.
New techniques and experimentation continue to question the relevance of preciousness, highlighting the shifting values from material worth to the personal associations that jewellery holds. The exhibition celebrates jewellery from the point of view of both the maker and the wearer. It considers the pleasures of wearing jewellery and the many meanings associated with jewellery which are at times unpredictable and, in turn, unexpected.
Press release from the NGV website
Otto Künzli (German, b. 1948) Wallpaper brooches (installation view) 1982 Wallpaper, synthetic polymer core, steel Photo: Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the C/O Berlin Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Mercury 2001
“It’s hard to think of contemporary culture without the influence of Pierre et Gilles, from advertising to fashion photography, music video, and film. This is truly global art.”
Jeff Koons
The cosmos of the worldwide renowned French artist duo is a vivid, colourful world poised between baroque sumptuousness and earthly limbo. Pierre et Gilles create unique hand-painted photographic portraits of film icons, sailors and princes, saints and sinners, of mythological figures and unknowns alike. Pierre et Gilles pursue their own, stunningly unique vision of an enchanted world spanning fairytale paradises and abyssal depths, quoting from popular visual languages and history of art. Again and again, they re-envision their personal dream of reality anew in consummate aesthetic perfection.
Pierre et Gilles are among the most influential artists of our time. In their complex, multilayered images, they quote from art history, transgress traditional moral codes, and experiment adeptly with social clichés. Their painterly photographic masterpieces exert an intense visual power that leaves the viewer spellbound.
Over the last thirty years, Pierre et Gilles have created photographic portraits of numerous celebrities including Marc Almond, Mirelle Mathieu, Catherine Deneuve, Serge Gainsbourg, Iggy Pop, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Nina Hagen, Madonna, and Paloma Picasso. They work almost exclusively in an opulently furnished studio, where their subjects are costumed lavishly and placed before three-dimensional backgrounds. Pierre photographs the model, and Gilles retouches and hand-colours the print. The reproducible portrait is rendered unique through painting, which highlights each detail with carefully selected materials and accessories.
As only venue in Germany, C/O Berlin presents the exhibition as the first of Pierre et Gilles in fifteen years. The show comprised a total of 80 unique large-format works – from their early photographies of the 1970s to the brand new pictures that were never shown in public before.”
Text from the C/O Berlin website [Online] Cited 20/08/2009 no longer available online
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) St. Sebastian 1987
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Neptune 1988
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Saint Rose De Lima 1989
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Le Petit Communiste Christophe (The Little Communist Christophe) 1990
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Legend (Madonna) 1990
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) La Madone au coeur blessé (Madonna with a wounded heart) 1991
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) St. Sebastian of the Sea 1994
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) The Martyrdom of St Sebastian 1996
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Extase (Arielle Dombasle) 2002
Pierre et Gilles (French, Pierre Commoy b. 1950 and Gilles Blanchard, b. 1953) Le Grand Amour (Marilyn Manson and Dita von Teese) 2004
C/O Berlin Postfuhramt Oranienburger Straße 35/36 10117 Berlin
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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