This week on Friday Round Up the 25th Melbourne Art Fair, Daniel Berehulak, Ballarat International Foto Biennale fundraiser, exhibitions and more.
Picture of the Week:
By the light of the supermoon - Madrid
(C) Andres Kudacki
Fair:
Melbourne Art Fair
(C) Marty Williams
The 25th Melbourne Art Fair opens today at the majestic Royal Exhibitions Building. More than 20,000 people are expected to view the 70 galleries that feature in this year’s Fair with solid representation from local curators as well as international galleries from Asia, Europe and South America. The Fair also features a bookshop and art making spaces.
With a philosophy of public engagement, this year’s Art Fair is also spilling into the streets of Melbourne with day and night events and pop-up shows in the city’s major art spaces such as the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) as well as other arts hubs including the Heide Museum of Modern Art in Bulleen and the Linden Centre for Contemporary Art in St. Kilda.
(C) Marty Williams
“Good art needs to be seen in the flesh to be appreciated, ” says Barry Keldoulis the Fair's director, who believes the Art Fair is the “physical manifestation” of the Internet – a twist on thoughts that tend to see the Internet as the interloper as opposed to the catalyst for driving people into galleries.
This year a number of galleries feature photo-media art as well as documentary photography including Galeria AFA from Santiago, Chile with an exhibition of black and white portraiture from renowned photographer Paz Errazuriz (below). (Photojournalism Now's interview with Galeria AFA director Camila Opazo will feature on next week’s Friday Round Up).
(C) Marty Williams
Keldoulis says that with the emergence of video art, collectors had initially “leap frogged” over photography, but he believes that photography is now most definitely on the radar of art collectors. However he doesn’t see “any merit or honesty in creating a distinction between photography as art and other visual art forms”.
(C) Marty Williams
Fair Director Barry Keldoulis
(C) Marty Williams
To that end Keldoulis doesn’t see the need for photo curators either claiming that art curators who understand image making can curate photography also. Nor can he see the point of galleries specialising in the medium. His comments definitely provide food for thought and will hopefully spark some enlightened debate on the topic of photography as art.
15-17 August
Melbourne Art Fair
Royal Exhibition Buildings
Carlton
Stills Gallery at Melbourne Art Fair 
(C) Trent Parke*
Sydney’s Stills Gallery, arguably Australia’s most respected photography-dedicated gallery, will feature a number of its artists works at the Fair including a selection from Trent Parke's The Camera is God series, Narelle Autio, Pat Brassington and Glen Sloggett. View the Stills Gallery catalogue here.
*The above image is not in the catalogue, but representative of the work in The Camera is God.
Feature Article:
Daniel Berehulak
The latest issue of NZ Pro Photographer magazine features Alison Stieven-Taylor’s interview with award-winning Australian photographer, and really nice guy, Daniel Berehulak. Download the iPad App for the magazine to read the story, or lash out and subscribe to the print version - it's a sexy, full colour glossy magazine that does justice to the amazing photographers it features.
Fundraiser:
Ballarat International Foto Biennale
On Sunday 31st August the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB) will host a fundraising event at Eleven40 Gallery in Malvern where photography lovers will be able to view and purchase photographs donated by some of Australia’s leading photographers and photo-media artists.
More than 200 photographers were invited to submit an image for consideration in the BIFB 2015 Collection, which is curated by Festival Director Jeff Moorfoot. The final selection of around 125 photographs, including one of Alison Stieven-Taylor's photographs, will feature in the BIFB 2015 Collection book also and the “first edition” will be auctioned at the fundraiser around 3pm.
Photographs are displayed anonymously with collectors purchasing a red dot for $125. On the Sunday those holding red dots will be able to select the image of their choice in a “first drawn” basis in the Print Selection Lucky Dip.
Moorfoot says the event provides “a fantastic chance to purchase a one-off archival print for a price perhaps well under the value of what an artist might normally sell his or her work for.” All works are offered “anonymously” so purchasers won’t know whose work they have bought until the provenance on the back is revealed.
Come along, enjoy the art, food and wine and help support BIFB.
Sponsors: Eleven40 Gallery, Kayell, Epson and Blurb.
Sunday 31 August
from 12noon
Eleven40 Gallery
1140 Malvern Road
Malvern
Check out the website for more information
Round Up of Exhibitions closing soon:
Melbourne:
Until 23 August
Shara Henderson – London Edit
Edmund Pearce
Sydney:
Ends Sunday 17 August
Paul Blackmore – ONE
Blackeye Gallery
Your Daily Photograph
If you haven’t signed up already, check out Your Daily Photograph to see Alison’s curated selection of 30 photographers, which runs through until the end of August. Already a number of photographs have been sold, and it's fantastic to see Australian photographers getting some well deserved attention on the international photography market. Today’s photograph is from Alexia Sinclair (above). Follow the link here to see more images.
