Family Photography Pictures: Auckland Festival of Photography

Showing posts with label Auckland Festival of Photography. Show all posts

Thursday, July 30, 2020

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 6 June, 2014|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up four new exhibitions for Melbourne; more news from the Auckland Festival of Photography; and an interview with Italian photo-artist Valentina Vannicola in the new Q&A section above. Plus Head On Photo Festival closes this weekend in Sydney and Australian high-end photography book publisher T&G Publishing launches Jean-Marc Caimi’s new book Daily Bread in Sweden and Japan.

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Exhibition: - Melbourne

Three Shows at Edmund Pearce

Christian Pearson – Industrial Graffiti

Photographer Christian Pearson, who is from Melbourne, says the works that comprise "Industrial Graffiti" aim to convey an “unconscious aesthetic created by labourers, technicians and engineers during the construction of our urban built environment”.

Defining the concept of ‘industrial graffiti’ Pearson says his images capture what appear as random markings on industrial sites, squiggles, letters, numbers, scrawled in different colours on metal, wood, plastic and over paint.

“The marking is an ephemeral part of a process that ultimately leads to the creation of a new, functional and aesthetic objective,” Pearson states. Like some graffiti, these markings appear defacements when in fact they are codes that guide those erecting our cities. This exhibition is an interesting visual study on a form of communication known to few.

Also on show at Edmund Pearce:

Tim Gresham – Reflect

Shannon McGrath - Fraction

Edmund Pearce

Level 2, Nicholas Building

37 Swanston Street,

Melbourne

Until 28 June

Exhibition: Melbourne

Tom Williams – Portside

Often the most powerful photographic stories are those you find in your own backyard. Tom Williams has spent years abroad capturing other cultures and building a career in documentary portraiture. On returning to Australia and the town of Wollongong, (near Sydney) Williams turned his focus on the local population and how the failing industrial economy was impacting residents.

In his exhibition “Portside” are images taken in Port Kembla and Wollongong, both places that have made their mark through the mining and shipping industries. Williams says he found Wollongong a shadow of its former self with those formerly engaged in industrial jobs now joining the ranks of the unemployed.

“The postcard coastline parallels one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Australia,” he says. “As a photographer I’m always asking: what do surfaces say about what’s hidden behind them? What attracts me to making portraits is the brief and intense interaction that results in an image that speaks of the subject, the picture-taker; and sometimes, the place. In the end you can only try to guess at the magnificent complexity and consciousness beneath the outer layer – this is something that keeps us looking at photographs.”

Colour Factory

409-429 Gore Street

Fitzroy

Book Launch:

Jean-Marc Caimi – Daily Bread

I’ll say it upfront. I am biased as I was the editor on this new book by Jean-Marc Caimi “Daily Bread”, and of course I love it. Publisher Gianni Frinzi of T&G Publishing has once again done a brilliant job bringing this book to life. It launched in Sweden last week at Caimi’s exhibition of the same name. You can buy Daily Bread by following the link here.

Daily Bread also launches at the exhibition’s opening in Tokyo at Reminders Photography Stronghold (RPS) on June 14. Caimi is the fourth recipient of the RPS Grant, which he was awarded for Daily Bread.

Launch: Saturday, June 14 at 4:00pm

2-38-5

Higashi-mukojima

Sumida, Tokyo 131-0032

Festival:

Head On Photo Festival

Head On Photo Festival ends this weekend. Check out the website to see what shows are still on

Showing Now for Head On

Valentina Vannicola's Dante's Inferno - until 8 June

Click on the Feature Articles tab above to read Alison Stieven-Taylor's interview with Valentina about this meticulous and thought-provoking work.

Festival:

Selected Exhibitions – Part Two:

Auckland Festival of Photography

Signature Exhibitions - Alison Stieven-Taylor’s Selection

Last week Photojournalism Now previewed some of the exhibitions on show in the first week of the Auckland Festival of Photography. This week Photojournalism Now takes a look at two exhibitions – one showing now and the other opening 12 June. Both present very different approaches to this year’s Signature Series’ theme -memory. There is also a photo-gallery with images from Rob Gilhooly’s “Suicide Forest” and Emil McAvoy’s “Reflections on Lily Pond”.

Showing Now

Auschwitz Revisited

Melbourne-based photographer Bronek Kozka’s “Auschwitz Revisited” is a contemporary portrait of a landscape that will be remembered in the annals of history as the site of one of the darkest moments of humankind. "Standing in the bitter cold looking to a foggy horizon and seeing what looked like columns, but they were chimneystacks for as far as I could see. One chimney, one hut...the magnitude of the horror dawned on me at this moment. I didn’t want to take any photographs at first...however at some point I decided to shoot. It was here that the most frightening and daunting revelation occurred to me. How close my family was to Auschwitz...how all could have ended here." This is how Kozka describes his experience visiting Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where he found himself on a personal exploration into his Polish heritage. His black and white images weave his own story with the somberness of the landscape and its open wounds.

Auschwitz Revisited

Bronek Kozka

4-21 June

Elam George Fraser Gallery

University of Auckland

25a Princes Street

Auckland

Opens 12 June

Unruly Memoirs: Nature Fights Back

In “Unruly Memoirs: Nature Fights Back” Christchurch-based artist Jane Zusters examines the aftermath of that city’s recent devastating earthquakes in a series of “geopolitical montages”. In this collection of digital images Zusters combines images of external and internal spaces to pose unlikely realms where the ceiling of a library may be blue sky and clouds, or the wall to a bedroom open to the street. These images while somewhat surreal are also situated in reality, reminders of the impermanence of structures and their perceived safety especially when faced by the power of Mother Nature.

12-28 June

Sanderson Contemporary Art

122 Jervois Road

Herne Bay

Suicide Forest

Rob Gilhooly

4-17 June

Hum Salon

123 Grafton Road

Grafton

(Read last week's blog post for the story on this exhibition)

Emil McAvoy

Reflections on Lily Pond

11 June - 21 June

ELAM Projectspace Gallery, Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland, 20 Whitaker Place

Photoforum: History in The Taking; 40 years (6-28 June)

Gus Fisher Gallery

74 Shortland Street

For details visit Auckland Festival of Photography

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 30 May, 2014|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up we look to New Zealand and the 11th Auckland Festival of Photography. Featured today is Alison Stieven-Taylor's interview with this year's commissioned artist, Tanu Gago, a young Samoan exploring cultural identity in the Pacific. Also this week are showcases from Ayala Gazit’s "Was It A Dream", iconic, and controversial photo documentarian Ann Westra’s “Our Future,” Chloe Riddell’s "Memories Enclosed…Handle with Care," and Chinese photographer Yang Jianchuan's Melody of Kunqu Opera. Lots of words and images to prompt thought, so if you're not heading "over the ditch" this year, enjoy this selection.

Festival: New Zealand

The Auckland Festival of Photography

Interview with Tanu Gago

Falency, Moe, Nana From the series: Tama'ita'i Pasifika Mao'i 2014

In Tanu Gago’s new body of work “Tama'ita'i Pasifika Mao'i” commissioned by the 2014 Auckland Photography Festival, this New Zealand artist challenges how Pacific women are represented with the desire to move imagery away from cultural stereotypes. Promulgated by the media and in advertising images Pacific women, and men, tend to be portrayed as symbols of Pacific tourism, or as living on the margins of contemporary society. Both are narrow views that Gago is keen to expunge... please click on the tab above - Feature Articles - to read this story in full and see Gago's photographs.

Selected Exhibitions on this year's theme - "Memory"

The 11th edition of the Auckland Festival of Photography features ten exhibitions concerned with the theme of memory in its Signature Series. Encompassing works by local and international photographers, the Series allows audiences to contemplate the meaning of memory and how time, circumstance and recollection can impact our understanding of ‘what has been’; that unique juxtaposition between the present and the past as described by French philosopher Roland Barthes in his seminal work Camera Lucida.

This week’s selection features Ayala Gazit’s "Was It A Dream", iconic, and controversial photo documentarian Ann Westra’s “Our Future” and Chloe Riddell’s Memories Enclosed…Handle with Care, plus a photo gallery with images from performance artist Tatsumi Orimoto and Chinese photographer Yang Jianchuan.

Ayala Gazit’s "Was It A Dream" is a work created by loss. In this deeply personal work Gazit creates a portrait of a brother she never knew. Born in Israel to an American mother and Israeli father, at the age of 12 Gazit learned she had an older brother, James, living in Australia. But before she could meet him he committed suicide in 1996 ending her dream of knowing her sibling. She says this series of photographs in “Was it a Dream” is her “attempt to create a portrait of my brother whom I will never meet by photographing the ‘un-photographable,’ and following the traces and echoes of one’s existence after his passing”.

(All images C) Ayala Gazit

Was It a DreamAyala Gazit

29 May - 17 June

Silo 6, Wynyard Qtr

Auckland

Ans Westra has spent much of her life documenting New Zealand’s indigenous people. As a migrant from Europe Westra was fascinated with her new homeland and since the late 1950s she has amassed a collection of images that capture a world few have witnessed from the outside. While her pursuit has not been without controversy she says “No true appraisal of Maori from an outside perspective was happening at the time and their culture seemed to be on the verge of extinction. Arriving here…with a curiosity for humanity gave me a unique place. Though in later years Maori themselves questioned my authority and understanding as an outsider at the same time they gave me a view on their changing world…Now being more involved with documenting and preservation of this beautiful landscape I come to that with the love Maori have for their land, their Turangiwaewae.” In “Our Future” Westra showcases colour works from her book of the same name, along with a range of vintage black and white photographs.

All images (C) Ans Westra

Our Future

Ann Westra

31 May – 15 June

NorthArt

Norman King Square

Ernie Mays Street

Northcote Shopping Centre

Auckland

In“Memories Enclosed...Handle with Care” New Zealand photographer Chloe Riddell examines what she sees as the “inadequacies of conventional family photography to describe the reality of family life”. Exploring societal ideals and conventions around notions of family life that are perpetuated by the media and popular culture, Riddell juxtaposes the idea of “domestic truth…and family reality” in an attempt to “reclaim my own personal memories” and to frame them in what she labels “family truth”.

All images (C) Chloe Riddell

Chloe Riddell’s Memories Enclosed…Handle with Care

28 May - 7 June

Elam Projectspace Gallery

University of Auckland

20 Whitaker Place

Auckland

Also featured this year in the “Memory” themed exhibitions are New Zealand photographer Emil McAvoy's “Reflections on Lily Pond,”( 11 June - 21 June) Chinese photographer Yang Jianchuan’s “Melody of Kungqu Opera,” ( 29 May - 17 June) and Japanese performance artist and photographer Tatsumi Orimoto (29 May - 17 June). There is also a group show, Photoforum: History in The Taking; 40 years (6-28 June).

Yang Jianchuan

Melody of Kunqu Opera

"With a history of more than 600 years, Kunqu Opera is known as the “mother of Chinese dramas”, and considered an “orchid” in this field. In Chinese culture, “orchid” is recognized as elegant, neat, and clean; together with plum flower, bamboo, and chrysanthemum, they represent Chinese people’s interpretation on traditional “culture of elegancy”, says Chinese photo-artist Yang Jianchuan.

Melody of Kunqu Opera

29 May - 17 June

Visit the Auckland Festival of Photography website here for the full 2014 program.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 22 May, 2015|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up Part One of the Auckland Festival of Photography coverage. Next week Alison Stieven-Taylor reports live from the Festival's opening. This week features four exhibitions from the Signature Series plus an interview with the 2015 Auckland Festival of Photography Commissioned Artist, PJ Paterson.

Feature:

Truth and Fiction

Auckland Festival of Photography

28 May to 20 June

The 12th edition of the Auckland Festival of Photography focuses on the theme – Truth and Fiction. In the Signature Series Exhibitions a number of local artists showcase their work along with selected international guests. Here’s a snapshot of what’s on offer- Part One.

PJ Paterson: 2015 Commissioned Artist

Read the interview with PJ Paterson about his new series (above) at the end of this week's post.

Exhibitions:

Maria Kapajeva – Interiors

This series by Russian artist Maria Kapajeva comprises digitally manipulated collage artworks that use found photographs. In Kapajeva’s artworks we see Russian women in their domestic environment adopting the poses that Western mass media use to exemplify female sexuality. This commentary on the clash of cultures and the labelling of women builds on Kapajeva’s body of work that focuses on women’s issues in contemporary society and the cultural and social stereotypes that are perpetuated by the mass media.

Until 17 June

Silo Park

Wynyard Quarter

Jae Hoon Lee – Omnipresent

A self-proclaimed cultural wanderer, New Zealand based Jae Hoon Lee, who is originally from Seoul, showcases his work Omnipresent in this year’s Signature Series.

Omnipresent is an artistic departure for Lee and is the result of a six-month residency in 2014 at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York. By layering original photographs taken across multiple occasions and locales, Lee weaves fragmentary images into dense, digital compositions. Elusively hyper-real, Lee’s landscapes build a technologically amplified version of the world around him.

Lee calls his practice of stitching multiple photographs together to create a single work, ‘time-based’. His intention here is to envelop multiple moments within these mural-scale images creating an artwork that moves the viewer beyond reality and into the realm of the surreal.

Until 20 June

Trish Clark Gallery

1 Bowen Avenue

Lay of the Land – Group Show

Featuring 11 New Zealand photographers this group show explores the urban expansion and transformation of Auckland. Curator Anita Totha is a Hungarian-American photographer originally from New York. Currenlty based in Auckland she is a co-founder of Tangent, a contemporary photography collective.

Totha says this exhibition draws on the 1975 seminal exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” which featured photographers such as Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz and Robert Adams and documented the urban sprawl of America.

In Lay of the Land Auckland’s growing metropolis comes under the spotlight to explore what Totha says are “overlooked areas of change thought to be mundane and normal; the land our homes are built on, our daily commute on the thoroughfares in and out of the city, the reserves and natural areas on our doorstep”. What Baltz labelled “the places where the future hangs in question”.

“The city’s landscape as we know it today is changing. The photography and moving image included in this exhibition takes a deeper look at the ever-changing state of our urban environment, the conversion of communities, the vanishing natural and topographic landscape and the imminent changes that lie ahead,” says Totha.

Artists:

Until 13 June

Papakura Art Gallery

10 Averill Street

Papakura

Anne Noble – No Vertical Song

Anne Noble’s exhibition No Vertical Song comprises 15 portraits of dead bees. But this exhibition is more than a microscopic view of the Apis in rigor; it is a commentary on our relationship with the natural world and explores the notion of a time when the bee may be extinct. Noble is one of New Zealand’s most celebrated photographers. This year Noble was given the Overseas Photographer Award in the 31st Higashikawa Awards in Japan.

Until 4 July

Two Rooms

16 Putiki Street

Newton, Auckland

Interview:

PJ Paterson - 2015 Commissioned Artist

talks to Alison Stieven-Taylor

From the new series commissioned by the Auckland Festival of Photography -

the remaining images will be revealed at the Festival's opening on Thursday 28th May.

New Zealand artist PJ Paterson’s images comprise multiple layers where sweeping landscapes are juxtaposed with the trappings of a consumerist society to create surreal environments. His melding of fact and fantasy taps in beautifully to this year’s Auckland Festival of Photography theme – Truth and Fiction - so it is no surprise that when the Festival was searching for the 2015 commissioned artist, Paterson’s work fell under the judges’ gaze.

“This is my first public commission, it’s awesome, “ says Paterson. “Working with the Festival’s theme of Truth and Fiction meant the brief was very broad and wasn’t beyond my normal scope…my work is highly manipulated, it’s not a real representation of what I see, but rather what I feel.”

To demonstrate, Paterson refers to the image where thousands of bicycles reach to a brooding horizon. “When I was in Amsterdam there were bicycles everywhere. It’s overwhelming how many bikes are on the streets, but taking a single image doesn’t convey that sense, that feeling. In this image I am recreating the impression that all these bikes had on me, that idea that there are thousands and they go on forever to fill the landscape”.

This train of thought is also evident in Paterson’s other images where junkyard cars and engines flood picturesque valleys creating a metaphor for the waste generated in our cities. He says that initially it wasn’t his intention to make comment on the consumerist nature of society, and its environmental impact, but that is what many people believe is his aim.

“I’m not really trying to convey a message or a belief of mine, but it is amazing just how much stuff we make and buy and throwaway. There’s a kind of beauty to it, like there is with images of derelict buildings. There’s something cool about it, they look amazing even though it’s someone’s hurt. There’s kind of a voyeurism to it rather than being right in it.”

Paterson tells that he came to photography through painting after a life changing experience led him to follow his artistic heart. This former electrician is now carving a name in the art world and making a living from his passion with his unique canvases and limited photographic series. Sold exclusively through Sanderson Contemporary Art gallery in Auckland, Paterson’s photographs are available in editions of only three increasing the cachet for collectors.

Initially Paterson used photography as part of his painting practice, photographing subjects that he would then interpret on canvas. Now he works across both mediums dedicating himself to one stream at a time depending on inspiration. Recently he’s been selling as many photographs as paintings, which he says is a shift. “I think there’s been a bit of a stigma around photography as art because so many people think they can take a great photo, but attitudes are starting to change”.

To fulfill the Festival commission Paterson has created five new works that deal with urban-scapes and feature images he shot in Shanghai earlier this year. This new series builds on his existing work where Paterson inserts unlikely objects or buildings into existing streetscapes to create newly imagined cities. The commissioned work will be on show at Silo 6 in Wynyard Quarter until 17 June.

To see more of his work visit PJ Paterson

For more information visit Auckland Festival of Photography