AUSTRALIAN CENTRE FOR PHOTOGRAPHY
UNTIL AUGUST 22
Edward Burtynsky: Australian Minescapes
Edward Burtynsky is one of the world's leading contemporary landscape photographers. His 'manufactured landscapes' have included stark images of recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries. This series of images, taken in the eastern goldfields and the Pilbara of Western Australia, continues Edward Burtynsky's examination of natural landscapes modified by mankind in the pursuit of the raw materials required for our modern society.
"Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times." Edward Burtynsky: Australian Minescapes is a new body of work by Burtynsky, commissioned for the FotoFreo 2008 Festival. For this exhibition a selection of images from his Shipyard images from China and Ship Breaking images from Bangladesh will be presented alongside his Australian Minescapes images.
© Edward Burtynsky Otter Juan Coronet Mine #1 Kalgoorlie, Western Australia 2007
Christopher Ireland: Breathe
Thousands of Australians die each year from diseases caused by inhaling asbestos. In a cruel irony, what was once hailed as a 'wonder fibre' is now the undoing of many who breathe it in. Embedded in the lungs, the tiny fibres can cause cancers and lung diseases that eventually suffocate the affected. Breathe is a collection of portraits of women who have lost their husbands to asbestos-related diseases. Photographed by Christopher Ireland in their local environment, each image tells a story about how these women have looked for answers, struggled to cope and ultimately grieved their loss. Asbestos leaves a cruel legacy. Many more healthy, breathing Australians will fall victim to fibres that have already lodged in their lungs as death rates peak around 2025. In the dread that it engenders, in the pain and suffering it brings to so many families, in the arrested dreams and the contemplation of what may lie ahead, it knocks us breathless.
© Christopher Ireland Joan 2008
Francesca Rosa: Interior Disaster
Interior Disaster is a record of a decomposing household approximately eleven months after Cyclone Larry destroyed it. With the studious intent of a forensic photographer, Francesca Rosa takes inventory of the peeling veneers and mouldy carpets as residual evidence of a crime by an absent and unknowable perpetrator. Queensland artist Francesca Rosa grew up in Innisfail and witnessed first hand the devastation Larry caused. Interior Disaster forms part of a larger body of work that focuses on the interface between people and their environments from various locations throughout Far North Queensland.
© Francesca Rosa Interior Disaster #2 2007
The Lake
AUGUST 28 - OCTOBER 10
"The Antipodes was a world of reversals, the dark subconscious of Britain. It was, for all intents and purposes, Gothic par excellence, the dungeon of the world." G. Turcotte, Australian Gothic 1998
Since colonial settlement the Australian landscape has been depicted by artists and writers as a haunted wilderness. The 'dark continent' at the end of the world was blank page onto which Europe could project their gothic fantasies. In this exhibition eight contemporary photomedia artists explore the exquisite strangeness of the Australian landscape. Many of these images have been created in and around Australian lakes - Lake Eyre, Lake George or the man-made lakes resulting from the damming of Tasmania's rivers. But on another level, The Lake also serves as a metaphor for places that are at once seductive and dangerous, on whose mirrored surfaces our dark desires are reflected back at us.
© Rebecca Dagnall Paradise in Suburbia #5 2009
Michelle Lord: City Of The Immortals
AUGUST 28 - SEPTEMBER 20
Inspired by a short story by Jorges Luis Borges, City of the Immortals refers to a vast mythological Roman city in which a lone figure navigates a magnificent labyrinth in search of immortality. A poetic interpretation of Borges' imaginary cityscape, these images intentionally evoke spatial and geometric confusion, where great pillars extend into infinity and endless staircases entwine like a three dimensional maze.
Michelle Lord has an ongoing fascination for fictional environments. Working non-digitally and using simple materials such as card and paper, she creates her images from meticulously handmade models. Through the eye of the camera, these models are transformed into sprawling imaginary cityscapes.
Acclaimed British artist Michelle Lord has exhibited internationally, including APhF08 the Athens Photography Festival, Greece and the Pingyao Photography Festival in China. Her images have been published in photographic journals around the world.
© Michelle Lord Untitled #2 2005-07
Nairn Scott: The Glomesh Project
AUGUST 28 - SEPTEMBER 20
All that glitters these days can be called gold. In this exhibition valuable gold fob watches and tasteful candelabra sit alongside gloriously cheap gold nick-nacks from the Two Dollar Shop. The Glomesh Project traverses the complex symbolic nature of gold: a precious metal, a colour, a prize, a status symbol. Of the many golden objects photographed for this installation, the distinction between the genuine and the fake is difficult to determine.
The tension between the real and the representation underscores some of the key debates in photography since the 19th Century. Sydney artist Nairn Scott investigates how meaning, context and our own expectations often confuse and confound a photograph's original indexical link. The Glomesh Project will be shown in conjunction with another body of work by Nairn Scott; Distinction, that opens at James Dorahy Project Space from 8 until 27 September.
© Nairn Scott The Glomesh Project 2009
South: War
OCTOBER 16 - NOVEMBER 21
Sean Flynn, Tim Page, Stephen Dupont, David Dare Parker, Jack Picone, Ben Bohane, Michael Coyne, Ashley Gilbertson
"At present there are 43 conflicts taking place on our planet. Once, the battlefield was the place of devastation, now it is streets, alley-ways, schools and places of worship. People and places are no longer protected or sacred and in much of the world it is now safer to be a soldier than an unarmed civilian" - °SOUTH members' statement
°SOUTH is a collective of dedicated and award-winning Australian documentary photographers who have covered conflicts from Vietnam in 1965 to present day Afghanistan. This collection of their images exposes the impact that war has on its victims, both civilians and military, whose lives are shattered by wars they did not start and over which they have no control. Often working at great risk to themselves, these photographers have created images that have gone on to influence public opinion, make history and inspire us to find other ways to solve our differences. The exhibition is a haunting journey through the devastation inflicted by war, where the only hope rests in the power of a photograph to deliver a critical humanistic message.
© David Dare Parker Aitarak Militia members mourn, East Timor 1999
© Stephen Dupont Suicide Bombing, Afghanistan 2008
The 2009 Nikon-Walkley Press Photo Exhibition
OCTOBER 16 - NOVEMBER 21
The Nikon-Walkley Photographic Awards recognise the invaluable contribution of press photography to the Australian news media. From capturing split-second moments to documenting people, places and communities over time, press photographers chronicle the world around us.
Every year more than 1000 photographs are judged for selection in the Nikon-Walkley Photographic Awards. The exhibition showcases a shortlist of more than 100 works by Australia's best photojournalists. Tragedy and triumph, elation and devastation: this exhibition shows the big moments of the year in news.
© Craig Greenhill Redskins Cheerleader (from India's IPL Fans) 2008
< p> http://www.acp.org.au/___________________________________________________
JOHNSTON GALLERY
UNTIL AUGUST 23
Deborah Paauwe: Carousel
© Exquisite Wheel 2008
http://www.johnstongallery.com.au/index.html
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CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY
UNTIL SEPTEMBER 27
GALLERY 1
Tracey Moffatt: First Jobs
Tracey Moffatt's series First Jobs is a nostalgic portrayal of the jobs she worked as a teenager and student to obtain the kind of freedom that could only be achieved through a regular salary. "The thing about making a bit of your own cash was that you could buy your own clothes and not have to wear the clothes that your mother picked out."¹ Mind-numbing and backbreaking labour, working in factories, peeling pineapples, packing meat and washing hair in a salon resulted in Moffatt's ticket to Europe in the late seventies. Hours of scrubbing floors or washing dishes allowed time for the imagination to run wild, and made 'knock-off time' all the more rewarding. Working hard at these tedious jobs however, was character building, and in Moffatt's case, eventually led her to the life she now enjoys as a full-time artist, a job she explains that has no 'knock-off time'.
¹ Tracey Moffatt, from the artist statement for First Jobs, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery 2008
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GALLERY 2
Clare Rae: Climbing The Walls and Other Actions
Climbing the Walls and Other Actions is primarily concerned with visually representing my experience of femininity, whilst also exploring aspects of representation that relate to feminism. The project considers the relationship between the body and space by including formal elements within each frame such as windows and corners. Through a sequence of precarious poses I explore my relationship with femininity, an approach born of frustration. I use the body to promote ideas of discomfort and awkwardness, resisting the passivity inherent in traditional representations of femininity. The images attempt to de-stabilise the figure, drawing tension from the potential dangers the body faces in these positions. Whilst the actions taking place are not in themselves particularly dangerous, the work demonstrates a gentle testing of physical boundaries and limitations via a child-like exploration of the physical environment.
Rae is the winner of the 2009 Colour Factory Award.
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GALLERY 3
Matthew Abbott, Paul Batt, James Brickwood, Darren Clayton, Georgia Metaxas, Simon O'Dywer, Andrew
Quilty, Leah Robertson, Dean Sewell, Laki Sideris, Tom Williams, Krystle Wright: CCP Documentary Photography Award
The CCP Documentary Photography Award is a biennial showcase of contemporary Australian documentary photography. Since the inaugural exhibition in 1997, this event has grown in profile and significance. It represents a unique, national initiative in support of documentary photography, providing a rare opportunity to assess the themes, styles and ideas that characterise this fascinating genre. This year's exhibition demonstrates the breadth of contemporary approaches to documentary practice from traditional black and white narratives through to vibrant colour recordings all of which have been achieved without digital manipulation. Themes range from Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires through to ocean swim racing and portraits of people having their haircut.
Image: Matthew Abbott Untitled #2 2008 (from the series Istanbul)
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GALLERY 4
Anne Ferran: Canal
CANAL depicts the Bowback Rivers in East London, an urban industrial area, which was already on the verge of disappearance when I was recording it. It is the site of the 2012 London Olympics, preparation for which requires destruction and rebuilding on a massive scale. I was there in early 2007 when the closing off and razing was just beginning. What strikes me now is how quickly that recent past has receded and how startlingly unfamiliar, almost dreamlike, the place has become.
CANAL is part of a projected cycle of three video works planned for completion by 2012.
NIGHT PROJECTION WINDOW
Laith McGregor: Maturing
This video attempts to locate the absurdity of masculinity. By absurdity, I mean the way the notion of the male is perceived in society and how illogical the idea of manliness can appear. I began by demystifying the male stereotype and evoking the absurd within male dominated subcultures through the depiction of hair, which acted as a signifier for male authenticity. I explore the identification of the masculine and the use of the guise as a masquerade through simple repetitive actions. I set out to reveal the dramatisation of the role model, through identities such as sportsmen, movie stars and family role models. Maturing is intended to be a satire, an in-your-face mockery of the male (a mockery that resulted in a rash that persisted for three days after the work was completed). The characters I play in Maturing could relate to anyone. I only hope to be able to project this elusive state and locate it within a coherent context that relates to masculinity, its absurdity and me.
http://www.ccp.org.au/
