This week on Photojournalism Now: Friday Round Up it is all about the 2017 Ballarat International Foto Biennale.
Special Feature:
2017 Ballarat International Foto Biennale
(C) Meg Hewitt Tokyo is Yours - Fringe
Opening tomorrow in the Victorian regional centre of Ballarat, an hour's drive from Melbourne, the 2017 Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) runs for four weeks. Its expansive program promises to showcase work that appeals to a broad audience and the success of the festival is largely pinned on its major drawcard, the blockbuster David LaChapelle exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat.
This exhibition, that's ticketed (a first for the festival), has received giant publicity and is marketed on billboards, trains and within the media showing a brand new level of advertising for this regional occasion.
LaChapelle's superstar profile is simply a terrific asset for the pageant, and his works, some of which you could see on this submit, are larger than lifestyles, drawing on spiritual artwork history tropes and superstar tackiness. His pix are lauded within the art world and if not anything else, are maximum sincerely eye-catching, even though this type of photography does not hobby me, as my readers recognise! Nor does some of the more conceptual images on display, a great deal of which leaves me cold.
But there are most definitely exhibitions which have caught my attention and for those documentary lovers you won't be disappointed having made the trek to Ballarat. From the Core program my top pick is Rearranging Boundaries, a group show curated by Australian documentary photographer Aaron Bradbrook and featuring the work of Zanele Muholi (South Africa), Tanya Habjouqa (Jordan), Abbas Kowsari (Iran), Wei Leng Tay (China) and Remissa Mak (Cambodia). You can read my feature article on this exhibition in Saturday's Australian Financial Review Weekend.
There are also a number of exhibitions in the large Fringe program which are worth checking out - Lloyd Williams Rustic Remnants, MAP Group's Beyond Borders 2017, Meg Hewitt's Tokyo is Yours and Helga Leunig's Three Weeks in Havana, Tony Evans' The Faces of Sovereign Hill - to name a few. In fact, the Fringe has more appeal for me than the Core this time around.
This year's BIFB is headed by new festival director Fiona Sweet, who has swept into the job, and Ballarat, after a successful career in design and I suspect her background is reflected in the choice of some of the exhibitions such as Reverie Revelry: Fashion Through Photography and LaChapelle. Sweet's agenda, to take the festival from its regional roots and elevate it on the national arts calendar, is ambitious as it is hard enough to get audiences to galleries in the capital cities let alone country towns. Let's hope the program with its stars and its breadth heralds success.
If you are in Melbourne, then it's an clean power down the dual carriageway. For those interstaters, make a weekend of it. I'm certain you may not be upset by means of the program, or by means of Ballarat, that is one of the most stunning Victorian u . S . A . Cities, its Gold Rush architecture a visual deal with in itself. There's suitable espresso and food to be observed too. So do your bit and support the Arts, because they're essential to the health of our society and should not be undervalued or omitted.
BIFB in pics - a random choice
Core Program
Rearranging Boundaries
Ballarat Trades Hall
(C) Abbas Kowsari
(C) Remissa Mak
(C) Tanya Habjouqa
(C) Wei Leng Tay
(C) Zanele Muholi
Reverie Revelry: Fashion Through Photography
Ballarat Mechanics Institute
This group show features the work of Robyn Beeche, Noé Sendas, Prue Stent and Honey Long, Nancy de Holl and Matthew Linde.
(C) Bruno Bernini
(C) Robyn Beeche
(C) Honey Long and Prue Stent, Wind Form 2014
David LaChapelle Art Gallery of Ballarat
(C) David LaChapelle
(C) David LaChapelle
Fringe Program - a selection
(C) Meg Hewitt Tokyo is Yours
(C) Helga Leunig Three Weeks in Havana
(C) Helga Leunig Three Weeks in Havana
(C) Lloyd Williams Rustic Remnants
(C) Lloyd Williams Rustic Remnants
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
19 August - 17 September
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