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”.

(C) All images Christian Pearson

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

(C) Tom Williams

(C) Tom Williams

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

(C) Alison Stieven-Taylor

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.

(C) Valentina Vannicola/OnOffPicture

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

(C) Bronek Kozka

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.

(C) Bronek Kozka

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

(C) Jane Zusters

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.

(C) Jane Zusters

12-28 June

Sanderson Contemporary Art

122 Jervois Road

Herne Bay

Suicide Forest

Rob Gilhooly

(C) 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

(C) Emil McAvoy

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

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 20 June, 2014|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up last chance to see two fantastic exhibitions in Sydney, World Refugee Day in Melbourne and a new exhibition at Monash Gallery of Art explores the notion of 'the road'.

Exhibitions: State Library NSW

Ends 22 June

(C) Phillipe Lopez - World Press Photo 2014

This weekend is your last chance to see two exhibitions currently showing at the State Library of NSW in Sydney - World Press Photo and Sydney Morning Herald Photos 1440.

I saw both of these exhibitions at the State Library, which is a brilliant setting for these large scale shows. Viewing the works with me were high-school students who had the opportunity to learn about the images and their makers, as well as a large cross-section of the general public. While I was there  a steady stream of people moved through the exhibitions, and many left via the bookshop. Clearly there is a market and an audience for quality photography in this country and it was heartening to see such attendance.

Sydney Morning Herald Photos 1440

(C) Nick Moir

With 1440 minutes to the day this exhibition presents photographs taken by Sydney Morning Herald photographers in the course of their daily jobs. When this show went up all of the exhibiting photographers were in the employ of Fairfax Media, the Herald's publisher. With the recent decimation of the photography department at the Herald, these former staffers are now swimming in the overcrowded freelance pool while the Herald takes its images from agencies. More cost-cutting measures marking the continued demise of original, quality content made even more depressing by the exhibition's narrative that reinforced the important work that these photographers do in capturing unique views of Sydney and its people.

(C) Anthony Johnson

(C) Jenny Evans

(C) Kate Geraghty

World Press Photo 2014

I really admire the way the World Press Photo (WPP) exhibitions are presented. With clear information panels that support the large scale images the WPP is all encompassing. Having viewed many of these winning images on screen it was fantastic to see them in reality and to gain an understanding of scope. John Stanmeyer's winning photograph (below) was even more impressive in print. While this photograph has attracted controversy, for me it speaks volumes about the world today, our reliance on technology and above all, our will to hope.

(C) John Stanmeyer

(C) Alessandro Penso

(C) Julius Schrank

Until Sunday 22nd June

State Library of NSW

Sydney

Screening:

Beyond Borders

MAPgroup

(C)Silvi Glattauer

On Sunday at 12noon on the Big Screen at Federation Square the film 'Beyond Borders' will be aired as part of the activities to celebrate World Refugee Day. 'Beyond Borders' is a collaborative project with refugees and asylum seekers and members of the MAPgroup; MAP stands for Many Australian Photographers.

“Beyond Borders presents an alternative view around some of the issues relating to asylum seekers and refugees in Australia. The topic of asylum seekers and refugees dissects our community, yet few of us have met, befriended or shared stories with people in the unenviable position of having to seek asylum in another country. If we believe Australia is the sum of all her parts, we as citizens all benefit from knowing more about this topic and about the people in this position" - MAPgroup.

(C) Ponch Hawkes

(C) Naomi Herzog

(C) Joseph Feil

(C) Joyce Evans

(C) Juanita Wilson

(C)Silvi Glattauer

MAPgroup members involved with the 'Beyond Borders' project include Silvi Glattauer, Julie Bowyer, Tobias Titz, Ponch Hawkes, Morganna Magee, Nicole Marie, Joseph Feil, Andrew Chapman, Naomi Herzog, Jenny Hodge, Jim McFarlane, Helga Leunig, Juanita Wilson, Julia Millowick and Joyce Evans.

World Refugee Day

Sunday 22nd June

Beyond Borders screens 12noon

Federation Square

Melbourne

Exhibition:

The Road - Group Show

(C) Micky Allan

The ‘road’ has long been the subject of artistic expression, a symbol of the physical and allegorical paths we follow. In this group exhibition featuring eight artists - Micky Allan, Virginia Coventry, Gerrit Fokkema, John Gollings, Tim Handfield, Ian North, Robert Rooney, Wes Stacey - the archives of the Monash Gallery of Art have been mined to uncover works taken in the 1970s and 1980s. These photographs examine the meaning of the road in modern Australian life through the exploration of the relationship of photography and the experience of road travel.

MGA Curator Stephen Zagala says, "The road has often provided Australian photographers with a means to an end, whether a landscape or a picturesque community in some distant part of the country. But as this important exhibition shows, during the 1970s, the road took on a whole new meaning for Australian photographers. It provided a space for innovation and experimentation, and also a photographic reconsideration of Australian life."

(C) Wesley Stacey

(C) Tim Handfield

The exhibition features Wes Stacey's visual travelogue of the trips he made in the early seventies around Australia in a Kombi. "The Road" also includes John Gollings’s monumental, ten-metre long streetscapes of Surfers Paradise Boulevard from 1973, and Robert Rooney’s iconic Holden park, featuring Rooney's Holden parked in 20 different locations across Melbourne. "The Road" also features work by "two of Australia’s most important feminist photographers, Micky Allan and Virginia Coventry, who both challenged many of the gendered assumptions about the road, automotive travel and Australian life during the ‘70s and ‘80s".

Opens Saturday 21st June at 3pm

Until 31 August

Monash Gallery of Art

860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill

(Melbourne)

Photography art Gallery Friday Round Up - 1 August, 2014|Photography Art Definition

This week on Friday Round Up new exhibitions for Melbourne and Sydney, a new book on photographer John Deakin in review, a photo essay on women mine workers in Poland and Photojournalism Now's Alison Stieven-Taylor invited to curate a month of photography for Your Daily Photograph.

Picture of the Week:

China: These bars are designed to keep the children at a distance to their books to help prevent nearsightedness. Lucky they don't have mobile phones and tablets. Photo: Reuters

Your Daily Photograph - Los Angeles

Australian Guest Curator for August

For the month of August Alison Stieven-Taylor is the guest curator for YourDailyPhotograph.com, an initiative of the Duncan Miller Gallery in Los Angeles. Each day subscribers receive an email – YourDailyPhotograph – that features curated photographs that are available for sale. This daily email is sent to the Gallery's subscriber-base of around 3800 dedicated photographic art collectors. Registration is free. Sign up today to see Alison's selection that features 30 photographers. Click here.

Book Review:

Under the Influence

John Deakin, Photography and the Lure of Soho

“Being fatally drawn to the human race, what I want to do when I photograph is to make a revelation about it, so my sitters become my victims.” John Deakin

English photographer John Deakin’s reputation as a boorish drunk largely eclipsed his talent during his lifetime and at the time of his death in 1972 at the age of 60 he was virtually destitute and his photographs forgotten.

Yet Deakin was an enigma. An artist whose considerable potential was squandered by drink and self-indulgence, Deakin was reportedly “loved and loathed in equal measure”. At one turn he was described as a “nasty little man” and at another, deeply insightful, with his compassion for his fellow man (sic) evident in his startling portraiture. Deakin’s images still stand today as a marker to what truly great portraiture is all about, but it is not due to his care and diligence that his archive remains. When Deakin died friends found piles of prints and scratched negatives under his bed...(to read the full review and see more images please click on the Book Reviews tab at the top of this blog).

Portrait of Francis Bacon by John Deakin 1952

Photo Essay:

Arek Gola - Kobiety Kopalnia

(Women in Mines)

This photo essay by Polish photographer Arek Gola turns the camera on the women who work in the mines in Poland. Here Gola has created a series of portraits that give a view to a world that few see.

All images (C) Arek Gola 2012

Exhibitions: Sydney

Paul Blackmore – One

Photographer Paul Blackmore is one of the most insightful documentary photographers working today, yet while much of his imagery falls into the reportage category, Blackmore's work translates across both photojournalism and fine art genres as is evidenced in his most recent book At Water’s Edge and now in this new collection, ONE.

In ONE, Blackmore's treatment of the human body evokes abstraction in distinct forms. Shot in studio in black and white Blackmore's nudes are reminiscent of the minimalist nudes of the likes of Erwin Blumenfeld, where the eye is drawn by the simplicity, the fall of the light and the interplay of shadows. Where Blumenfeld often used props such as venetian blinds and fabric and shot through diffused panels of glass, Blackmore has stripped back to the basics – one light source, one subject, one background – freeing the images of clutter and allowing the eye to roam.

All images (C) Paul Blackmore

5-17 August

Blackeye Gallery

3/138 Darlinghurst Road

Darllinghurst

Exhibition: Melbourne

Ruth Maddison

Australian photographer Ruth Maddison's series of work "In Residence" features photographs that were created during a three-month residency at Artspace in Sydney in 2013.

Maddison came to photography in 1976 in Melbourne at a time when women in particular were pushing artistic boundaries in the medium and using photography to explore the personal in a way their male counterparts largely had not. Of her artistic practice Maddison says, “I’m documenting the passage of my life via my image making. I’m recording what it is that makes me want to go on and on with the camera. Anything can interest me and it may not relate to anything I’ve done before or anything I’m working on. Everything I do and see and know somehow becomes included in what I want to translate into images”.

.

All images (C) Ruth Maddison

Until 23 August

Edmund Pearce

Lvl 2 Nicholas Building

37 Swanston Street

Melbourne

Exhibition: Melbourne

Kelvin Skewes - Nauru: What was Taken and What was Given

The island nation of Nauru, in Micronesia, is the world’s smallest republic. Many Australians know Nauru as an offshore processing centre for asylum seekers under Australia’s Pacific Solution policy; a continual source of contention and debate within Australia.

Melbourne photographer Kelvin Skewes says the work in his exhibition - Nauru: What was Taken and What was Given – “examines questions about extraction industries, the viability of the nation state, 20th century colonialism, 21st century paternalism, as well as our translational and intergenerational responsibilities".

All images (C) Kelvin Skewes

Until 24 August

Counihan Gallery

233 Sydney Road

Brunswick

(inside Brunswick Town Hall)