Archive for May 2018
BUNDANON Residency 2018 – WHY ARE WE HERE?
WHY ARE WE – documentation of a page from the Island Book
WHY ARE WE … Here at Bundanon?
In 2007 we were successful applicants for a Bundanon residency that enabled is to realize a major component of our individual PhD research. However we still needed to resolve many issues raised by this work and to return our finished works to be documented in the site that they were created. So in 2009 we were granted a second residency to complete this part of our studies.
While we were deep in our research other interesting and unanswered questions arose that have haunted us since this time. Although our itinerant life in the last few years has been exciting and constantly changing, we have missed the opportunity to be in a studio and a place devoted to just working on our practice.
Now this latest residency will give us time to work again at the boundaries of our practice and create the new work that has been gestating in our minds over these few years.
See our COOPER+SPOWART website for further info. (Please note the content of this page are Adobe Flash driven presentations)See relevant aspects of our past Bundanon residencies relating to our PhD research here Victoria COOPER Thesis – Doug SPOWART – Thesis.
FOLLOW OUR WORK over the next 3 weeks on our FACEBOOK Page
A SELECTION OF IMAGES
From artists’ books, photobooks, experimental projects, artwork documentation and our collaboration made during our 2007 & 2009 residencies.
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SINGLE MEN’S QUARTERS CAMERA OBSCURA
Documentation of the Camera Obscura image in the Single Men’s Quarters
PROJECTIONS
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SOME IMAGES FROM DOUG’S WORK
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SOME IMAGES FROM VICKY’S WORK
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TO FOLLOW OUR ACTIVITIES OVER THE NEXT 3 WEEKS “LIKE” our FACEBOOK PAGE and in “Follow” – click “SEE FIRST”
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Please join with us in this exciting project…
LIBRIS ARTISTS’ BOOK AWARD – Cooper+Spowart Finalists
The artists’ book TIDAL by Cooper+Spowart
Our artists’ book TIDAL is now on show as a FINALIST in the 2018 LIBRIS ARTISTS’ BOOK AWARD at Artspace Mackay, Queensland, Australia.
We are excited to be finalists in this Award exhibition. The awards were announced on May 26 – details of the winning works and a download of the exhibition catalogue are available at the bottom of this post.
ABOUT OUR ARTISTS’ BOOK – TIDAL :
TIDAL is a montage of fragmented imprints made from the solid reality of found objects swept up by the tide–beautiful castaways from the ocean.
These objects as image elements, no longer in their original form, are woven together as if a poem, song or dance. In many ways TIDAL relates to a ‘desire for that melancholy wonder that is the blue of distance’ from Rebecca Solnit’s A field guide to getting lost. Or just simply it could be about the artist and their art.
It is book of double-sided cyanotype prints, when held to the light, allow for the montage of the images front and back, thus merging and unfolding the space and time of the page and the book. Reading becomes the blending of the fragments through the spatial divide of the turning page.
The video that follows gives a basic view of the TIDAL book:
ABOUT THE TIDAL BOOK PROJECT:
This project began with the collection of beach detritus at low tide after the super moon at Wooli, north coast New South Wales.
We worked collaboratively in the intense heat of Christmas Day 2016 to hand coat the cyanotype emulsion on ricepaper, expose the ‘found objects’ to the paper in the sun, and then wash-out in running water with a dash of lemon juice to create the double-sided cyanotype folios.
Over the next year we developed the structural form of the book, and finally returned to finish it at Wooli, as this state, over Christmas in 2017.
The double-sided cyanotype prints, when held to the light, allow for the montage of the images front and back, thus merging and unfolding the space and time of the page and the book. Reading becomes the blending of the fragments through the spatial divide of the turning page.
THE BOOK:
A unique state book of 6 double-sided cyanotype images on rice paper.
Book size 49.5x30x1 cm
The text was written by Victoria Cooper and includes a quote by Rebecca Solnit.
Folders and text:
Canson Stonehenge and Arches paper with rice-paper collage elements.
Garamond font family in pigmented inks on Arches paper.
This book is another work created in an ongoing series relating to the locality of Wooli and we acknowledge the support provided by Dr Felicity Rea
BOOK TEXT:
Frontpiece: TIDAL
OTHER INFORMATION INCLUDING THE WINNING BOOKS:
Category 1. Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal National Artists’ Book Award
Winner: Clyde McGill for his work ‘Witness’
Category 2. Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal Altered Book Award
Michelle Vine for her work ‘Contested Biography I (quadrat)’
Category 3. Mackay Regional Council Regional Artists’ Book Award
Jamian Stayt for his work ‘Tagged’
Category 4. Artspace Mackay Foundation Tertiary Artists’ Book Award
Jenna Lee for her work ‘A plant in the wrong place’
LIBRIS CATALOGUE
CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO DOWNLOAD A COPY OF THE CATALOGUE
Libris_Awards_2018_Catalogue_of_Entries_brochureA4
SEE OUR POST ABOUT THE 2016 LIBRIS AWARDS HERE
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WISHING PHOTOBOOKS A ‘HAPPY 174th BIRTHDAY’
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Each year World Photobook Day is celebrated by members of the international network of Photobook Clubs. Since it’s inception 5 years ago it has been organized by The Photobook Club Madrid. The date for the World Photobook Day is October 14th which has been selected as it was on this date that Anna Atkins’ Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions was accepted and catalogued by the British Library in 1843.
The British Library catalogue entry for Atkins’ book
Each year we try to coordinate our own event at the Photobook Club Brisbane – (See past year’s events at the end of this post). This year’s (2017) WPBD project was a request for photobook people to send to us “A Birthday Card” to celebrate the occasion.
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Here are some of the contributions to this project:
Gael Phillips – The undifferenced arms of the Children Family
Gail Hoger-Neumann – A cyanotype made in Greece
Lou Gilbert
Stuart Murdoch
Julia Borrisova
Victoria Cooper– Χρόνια Πολλά Photobooks A cyanotype made in Greece
Maureen Trainer and Kevin Scattergood
Julie White
David Lee
Erica and David Lee
Dane Beesley
Doug Spowart’s 174 candles book
Thanks to all the contributors…..
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD A COPY OF WPBD CARD ALBUM 2017
WPBD-ALBUM PDF PIC
Some past WPBD Events we (Victoria and Doug) have coordinated include:
2016 WPBD – PHOTOBOOK SHELFIE Facebook Page
2015 WPBD – ‘READING PHOTOBOOKS’ @ Maud Gallery
2014 WPBD – GAEL PHILLIPS PRESENTS ANNA ATKINS @ The Edge Brisbane
2013 WPBD – A ‘MY FAVOURITE PHOTOBOOK’ MEETING @ The Grid, Toowoomba
Graphic for 5th WPBD
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GRACIA+LOUISE: A whisker of light @ Maitland Regional Art Gallery
A Whisker of Light ………PHOTO: a hold-up of a cut-out from the exhibition’s activity table
A Whisker of Light
An exhibition by Gracia Haby and Louise Jennison @ Maitland Regional Art Gallery March-April 2018
Along with the recent work of artists book shown in the vitrines, there was a few wall installations of Haby’s collages and Jennison’s pencil drawn birds.
The books are based on the layering of image fragments into a visual form of poetry and shown under glass much like museum specimens. These books when time is taken to ‘read’ can stir the imagination beyond the space of words.
The wall works, All breathing, all right, are a breathtaking 446 collages constructed on to antique postcards by Haby from 2006 to 2015. Overwhelming to take in on one visit these transformed postcards are regimented into columns that disrupt a formal ‘reading’ by left to right or of the entire work at once. Instead one discovers them individually, up close and at random bringing a kind of child play or ‘I spy’ to the engagement of this work.
Across the room in a free flowing formation is a flock of birds and one butterfly in flight, All flying, all right, drawn by the sensitive hand of Louise Jennison. Serendipitously, in the gallery space at certain times of the day, a streak of sunlight falls across the wall and seems to guide the birds as a reference to the exhibition title. In this gallery space these works form a kind of habit for the reimagining of the fragile relationship between humans and animals.
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All breathing, all right by Gracia Haby
Gracia Haby
All breathing, all right
2006–2015
Postcard collages
All breathing, all right (detail) by Gracia Haby
Gracia Haby
All breathing, all right (detail of 2 components)
2006–2015
Postcard collages
All flying, all right, by Louise Jennison
Louise Jennison
All flying, all right
2011–2014
Pencil on paper
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3 books by Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Disrupted and rumpled
Dim wood, spark bright
A warmed pebble in my hand
For further information about Gracia & Louise’s exhibitions see:
http://gracialouise.com/a-whisker-of-light
http://gracialouise.com/all-breathing-in-heaven
http://gracialouise.com/unwinking-night
Maitland Regional Art Gallery
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THE EXPO 88 PHOTO SHOW – 30 years on
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First & Last EXPO PHOTO SHOW Poster
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EXPO’88 – A conceptual photographer’s document
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At this time thirty years ago the people of Brisbane were beginning their EXPO’88 six-month adventure opportunity to encounter the world and its cultures and cuisine. EXPO’88 is often seen as a watershed in the transformation of Brisbane as a sleepy backwater into a vibrant cosmopolitan city of the world and, most certainly part of the 21st Century.
I had a season pass for EXPO’88 and created a personal body of work as a response to my experience of the event. As celebrations are beginning to hit the social media space I thought I would recollect on my EXPO’88 work.
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Here is the back-story behind my 1988 project … The First & Last EXPO PHOTO SHOW
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EXPO 88 Crowd Crush ………..PHOTO: Ethyl Stevens aka Doug Spowart
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In the EXPO’88 event I recognised an opportunity for the creation of a new body of work investigating emerging approaches to my work methodology. For varied reasons I had introduced to my practice the creation of alias identities to which my work was attributed. These identities were quite complete in that they had refined working styles, subject matter, presentation forms, a photographic portrait, signatures and artists statements. As a gallery director it was easy to slip the work of these ‘photographers’ into group shows for commentary and critical acclaim. These personae enable me to play a little game on a system that at times, from my perspective at times, was biased, exclusive, nepotistic and overly critical. It also enabled me to explore ideas and concepts relating to my photography and the presentation of photographs.
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When EXPO offered season passes I attended the passport portrait session with pair of fake glasses and a fictitious name, Eugene Xavier Pelham Owens, the initials and the signature spelled ‘EXPO’. The deception had begun. In time this project grew into an extensive body of work from 5 different personae all representing their manufactured personal responses to the EXPO experience. The exhibition was opened on April 1st 1989 (April Fools Day), it was reviewed positively in the Courier Mail and sales of work resulted from people who found the photographs reconnecting them with their experience of the event. The deception went undetected and after the exhibition the body of work passed into obscurity, as do so many exhibitions of photographs, and was slipped into archive storage boxes in my studio.
Whilst, at the time of the fieldwork on this project I called myself a ‘conceptual photographer’ as I felt that my work was driven by the overarching idea of personal experience documents rather than the photodocumentary reportage principles of truth and reality. I was aware of the term ‘conceptual artist’ and recognized that it had all kinds of baggage attached to it based on art theory and movements, however my work as a photographer at this time has simpatico with Sol Lewitt’s 1967 manifesto on conceptual art. He states:
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work. When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. (Lewitt 1967)
Recently Melissa Miles has discussed the term ‘Conceptual Documentary’ in her 2010 paper The Drive to Archive: Conceptual Documentary Photobook Design. The discusses in reviewing the photobooks of Stephen Gill, Mathieu Pernot and Matthew Sleeth. She asserts that this mode of photography is based on a theory that photographers want to collect and respond to a kind of ‘archive impulse’, making and arranging image sequences of daily life into photobooks. What appeals to me is that, as a Conceptual Documentary photographer I, as Miles defines, ‘seek[s] out and frame[s] their subjects according to a pre-determined idea or scheme. Processes of repetition and categorization are central to Conceptual Documentary’ (Miles 2010:50). For me, what I was engaged in was to make a commentary from a personal viewpoint and to create a contemporary record for public presentation and, ultimately archiving. While Miles’ contemporary Conceptual Documentary practitioner including the likes of Martin Parr freely publish their photobooks in the 1980s trade published productions were beyond the reach of most photographers including myself.
What I find interesting now is that the 1980s was a particularly productive period for me as I created a trilogy of exhibitions: Tourists Facts, Acts, Rituals and Relics, Icons & Revered Australiana and The First & Last Photo Expo Show. These were essentially social documentary projects based on a personal directorial premise. I found that the limited opportunities for presentation of the framed exhibition format of these shows led me to initial experiments with boxed sets of images and ultimately to self-published photobooks, the first of which was completed in 1992.
These days I’m not so concerned about any tag as my work is often so interdiciplinarian it is hard to define. What for me is interesting is that at the time I made work that may now be able to be defined and categorized using contemporary terms and definitions. What is also important now is that the EXPO’88 photographs, some 5,000 of them, exist as an archive not necessarily as a document of the place but rather as a personal, conceptual documentary photographer’s response to the EXPO’88 experience.
Doug Spowart December 26, 2013
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Lewitt, S. (1967). Paragraphs on Conceptual Art. Artforum 5: 8.
Miles, M. (2010) “The Drive to Archive: Conceptual Documentary Photobook Design.” Photographies 3, 49-68.
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HERE IS A SELECTION OF WORKS FROM MY EXPO’88 PSEUDONYMS
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John (Jack) Dorf ………(United Kingdom)
John (Jack) Dorf ………(United Kingdom)
Eugene Owens …….(USA)
Eugene Owens …….(USA)
Malenky Davotchka ……. (Russia)
Malenky Davotchka …….(Russia)
Y Regami ……(Japan)
Y Regami ……. (Japan)
Hanna Rhetzik …….(Czechoslovakia)
Hanna Rhetzik ……(Czechoslovakia)
Ethyl Stevens …….(USA)
Ethyl Stevens …….(USA)
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A PDF PRESENTATION CONTAINING MORE IMAGES IS AVAILABLE HERE: EXPO-SPOWART-v3
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First & Last EXPO PHOTO SHOW Poster
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Images and text © Doug Spowart Design of the Poster: Trish Briscoe
From the Doug Spowart Personal Art Archive 1953-2014
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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National Works on Paper submission – not shortlisted
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As an artist there is a need for affirmation and justification for one’s life in the activity and practice of artmaking. Artists prepare and curate their work in gallery exhibitions to present work – and then there are awards and competitions. Each year, as the call for entries comes around, we like many artists around the country, look at recent work and consider its appropriateness for specific awards.
There are of course thoughts of winning an award but perhaps more importantly is the opportunity to be shortlisted for exhibition and considered for purchase or collection. Equally important for us is the opportunity to connect with fellow artists in the curated exhibition that represent the judge’s opinion of what constitutes the most relevant works based on the competition’s criteria.
This year I submitted to the National Works on Paper Award an artists’ book that I had made during our Skopelos Works on Paper workshop in Greece last year. The book is an exploration of the idea of a montage of light capturing the performance of reading a book. Simultaneously the reader, the location where the reading took place and the page-turning action of reading is imaged in light sensitive cyanotype on the watercolour pages of the book.
Doug Spowart opens SKOP PHOTO after its creation in Greece PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
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Here’s an image of the book:
SKOP PHOTO artists’ book by Doug Spowart
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Other images of SKOP PHOTO folder, cover and details
ARTIST’S STATEMENT: SKOP PHOTO an artists’ book by Doug Spowart
This book is created using the cyanotype (sun print) process as part of the author’s ongoing investigation on the ontology of reading.
The book was folded into a concertina form to eventually allow for a variety of potential readings; either extended or page after page. The author then coated the light sensitive cyanotype emulsion onto the pages of the book.
The pages were slowly turned and extended over several minutes allowing the sunlight of the Greek island of Skopelos to strike the emulsion as author performed reading.
After washing in a bath of water, an image of the Aegean light was formed in Prussian blue on the pages of the book. Alternatively, where the light had not fallen on the page – there seemed to be no image formed. But this apparent absence was a “shadow” – a kind portrait of the artist reading the book in its moment of creation.
Today I received an email advising that my submission was not shortlisted..
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Not a big problem for me as only 1 in 16 artworks were accepted for the 2018 awards and those names on the list are a fine group of artists.
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If you are interested the 2018 National Works on Paper finalists were:
Raymond Arnold, Peter Atkins, Alec Baker, Martin Bell, Ray Besserdin, Solomon Booth, David Bosun, Godwin Bradbeer, Kate Briscoe, Jane Brown, Jon Campbell, Susanna Castleden, Danica Chappell, Hua Cun Chen, Sam Cranstoun, Lesley Duxbury, Robert Fielding, David Frazer, Ian Friend, Dana Harris, Katherine Hattam, Pei Pei He, Kendal Heyes, Mark Hislop, Deanna Hitti, Anna Hoyle, Natalya Hughes, Alana Hunt, Locust Jones, Jennifer Joseph, Noŋgirrŋa Marawili, Brian Martin, Georgie Mattingley, Mish Meijers, Viv Miller, Helen Mueller, John Nixon, Open Spatial Workshop, Elena Papanikolakis, Louise Paramor, Hubert Pareroultja, Jemima Parker, Riley Payne, Dan Price, Lisa Reid, Louise Rippert, Cameron Robbins, Brian Robinson, Elissa Sampson, Emily Sandrussi, Geoff Sargeant, Jo Scicluna, Liz Shreeve, William Smeets, Kylie Stillman, TextaQueen, James Tylor and Laura Wills, Trent Walter, Rosie Weiss, Mumu Mike Williams, Puna Yanima, Yvonne Zago, Tianli Zu.
Exhibition details at the Mornington Peninsula Regional Art Gallery:
The opening event and award presentations will take place on Saturday 21 July from 4-6pm. An electronic invitation will be sent to you closer to the date.
Now I’m looking forward to 2020
In the meantime I’ll be pursuing some more cyanotype documentations of the act of reading – maybe during our upcoming Bundanon Artists Residency in June…
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