Archive for June 2020
LYSSIOTIS+COOPER+SPOWART: WE ARE LIBRIS AWARD Finalists
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The LIBRIS AWARDS for Australian Artists Books is on again this year at Artspace Mackay – We are excited to announce that our works, including a Peter Lyssiotis book we collaborated on, have been selected in the 60 finalists. The exhibition is scheduled at Artspace Mackay between 27 June and 13 September 2020.
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A statement from the Artspace Director Tracey Heathwood
Since opening its doors in 2003, the gallery has been dedicated in its exploration and support of the artists’ book medium. The Libris Awards play a significant role in showcasing the very latest and best in contemporary artists’ book practice in Australia.
As extraordinary developments continue to unfold in response to Covid19, Artspace Mackay has faced and overcome many challenges presented throughout the year to now be in the final exciting stages of delivering another inspirational exhibition, 2020 Libris Awards: The Australian Artists’ Book Prize.
Despite restrictions beginning to ease across the country, lingering interstate travel constraints prevent our designated 2020 Libris Awards judges, Des Cowley and Robert Heather – who have already completed the challenging job of selecting finalists from an extensive range of artists’ books entries from across the nation – from travelling to Mackay for the final process of selecting winners in the three categories. In these exceptional circumstances, Artspace Mackay Director Tracey Heathwood will complete the final process of selecting this year’s prize winners.
Announcement of 2020 Winners: 4:30pm (AEST) Monday 13 July – Live streamed online via Artspace’s Facebook page.
HERE ARE THE BOOKS we were involved with :
PETER LYSSIOTIS: WHAT THE MOON LET ME SEE
A collaboration with Victoria Cooper + Doug Spowart who created and optimised pinhole images of Peter’s montage image to accompany his texts.
Peter Lyssiotis: What The Moon Let Me See
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The narrative of What The Moon Let Me See is a journey. It is also about a father and son and how their lives, and their purposes in life interweave. The journey is to a mountain; it could be Thomas Mann’s ‘Magic Mountain’, it could be the Bible’s Mount Ararat or it might be that mountain you see on the horizon when you look out of your car window as you drive through the country. The father and the son may be Abraham and Isaac or Kafka and his father or the father and son who live next door, or you and your father … the journey they’re on involves making decisions; perhaps the son will release the father, maybe the father will free the son … how do these two people read and map their worlds, how do they refer to the world here and the world beyond them?
VICTORIA COOPER: BEING PRESENT
Victoria Cooper’s BEING PRESENT
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Being Present has its physical origins from the Bundanon Trust and the Shoalhaven River.
The electron microscopic images come from unexplored work made during an earlier residence in 2007 of collected detritus from the river. The montages were constructed with these microscopic images as interventions into a riparian environment near the property.
The book is informed by the work of notable writers, thinkers and philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Rachel Carson.
DOUG SPOWART: HOME
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Doug Spowart’s book HOME
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
This book was conceptualised and created during an artist’s residency at Bundanon near Nowra in New South Wales in June 2018. The final design of the book took place in 2019.
For 5 years I have been homeless resulting from the need to travel, seeking work, looking for a place to settle, and maintaining connections with supporting friends and colleagues. The residency enabled inner thoughts to emerge that have been suppressed throughout this time.
Self-imaging is not something new to me. What is new however in this work is the frank reality of the expression, pose and perhaps vulnerability I present in these moments contemplating ‘home’ and what it means to me.
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Libris_Catalogue pic
Download a copy of the Catalogue:
LIBRIS_AWARDS-2020_Finalists_Catalogue
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SEE Other WOTWEDID.COM posts about the LIBRIS AWARDS:
Our FINALIST work from the 2018 Awards
https://wotwedid.com/2018/05/27/libris-artists-book-award-cooperspowart-finalists/
A COMMENT on the 2016 Awards
https://wotwedid.com/2016/10/22/covering-the-2016-libris-artists-book-award/
The JUDGE’S VIEW from Helen Cole of the 2013 Awards
https://wotwedid.com/2013/05/13/2013-libris-awards-the-judges-view/
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TWENTY-Documentary photography in Queensland
SLQ TWENTY Webstie header
We are excited to announce that a selection of our Nocturne photographs of Queensland are featured in the new State Library of Queensland exhibition TWENTY: Two decades of Queensland Photography
ABOUT the TWENTY exhibition
FROM THE SLQ Website:
The State Library of Queensland has grown a vast photographic archive reflecting the lives of generations of Queenslanders. TWENTY focuses on images in State Library’s contemporary collections. They reveal a story of a changing Queensland—one that still has echoes of its past but is also embracing a more diverse and tolerant future.
TWENTY is an opportunity to reflect on the last 20 years in Queensland’s history. Documentary photography plays a vital role in capturing the events and experiences that shape our lives. It offers us a powerful insight into a particular moment in time.
Looking back, the year 2000 seems a simpler time. Over the last two decades, society has undergone seismic shifts. Yet, some things transcend time: the shock and devastation caused by natural disasters; the beauty of our state’s wide-open spaces; and the ongoing connection of people to place. Immerse yourself in this rich and complex history.
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VIEW THE ONLINE EXHIBITION HERE: https://twenty.slq.qld.gov.au/
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Some of our Nocturne Queensland photographs featured in the TWENTY exhibition
ABOUT COOPER+SPOWART: Nocturne Imaging Projects
Victoria Cooper+Doug Spowart making Nocturne images
Photography is integral to the way we capture, interpret and share our experiences and deeply considered views of our world.
For around ten years we have been photographing the visual transformation of small towns and suburban places in those last moments of daylight and into night. Our intent is to capture this transient magical atmosphere of twilight where the afterglow of sunset combines with the illumination of streetlights and the room lights from inside houses that say someone is home. Additionally as some photographs created at this time require long camera exposures, the image captured shows the ghostly, blurred movement of people and car headlight trails.
The experience of nocturnal light is seductive yet uncanny. It connects us to the sustained beautiful melancholy felt when listening to Debussy’s Clair de lune while simultaneously evoking the unsettling, dark moments of a film noir movie.
Over the last seven years we have significantly documented as artists in residencies and personal projects communities including Muswellbrook, Grafton, Armidale, Bundaberg, Toowoomba, Miles, Cygnet, Wooli, Castlemaine, Murwillumbah, Bribie Island and numerous central NSW and Victorian regional towns.
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SEE MORE OF OUR NOCTURNE IMAGES FROM EAST COAT AUSTRALIA
@ www.nocturnelink.com
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TWENTY: THE CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS
FROM THE SLQ Website: The 56 photographers featured in TWENTY represent the incredible diversity of Queensland’s documentary photography community. Some are well-known, some are emerging, some have been practising their craft for years relatively unknown. Some studied photography, some are self-taught. They are all dedicated to documenting Queensland and their work has allowed State Library to develop an astonishing visual archive of our state in the contemporary era.
Michael Aird
David Allen
Anthony Anderton
Patricia Baillie
Stephen Booth
Hamish Cairns
Brian Cassey
Darren Clark
Suzanna Clarke
Jacqueline Curley
Rodney Dekker
Heidi Den Ronden
Jo-Anne Driessens
Justin Edwards
Leif Ekstrom
Liss Fenwick
Peter Fischmann
Amanda Gearing
Juno Gemes
Craig Golding
John Gollings
Troy Hansen
Josie Huang
Kelly Hussey-Smith and Alan Hill
John Immig
Reina Irmer
Daryl Jones
Cassandra Kirk
Marko Laine
Cameron Laird
Madeleine Marx-Bentley
Dominique Normand
Glen O’Malley
Chris Osborne
Renee Eloise Raymond
Mick Richards
Hannah Roche
Troy Rodgers
Brian Rogers
Dean Saffron
Jeremy Santolin
Cathy Schusler
Sarah Scragg
Arthur Liberty Seekee
Clare Sheldon
Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper
Reuben Stafford
Brodie Standen
Jason Starr
Richard Stringer
Garry Taylor
Shehab Uddin
Alf Wilson
Marc Wright
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COOPER’s SUBMISSION: Review of Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act
FROM THE FORWARD TO THE EPBC REVIEW DOCUMENT:
The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, plays a significant role in the protection and management of our environment and heritage. It operates within a broader context, alongside other Commonwealth laws and activities and those of state, territory and local governments. The activities of businesses, land managers and the community are also central to achieving environmental outcomes.
The EPBC Act requires that an independent review be undertaken at least once every ten years. The review must examine the operation of the Act and the extent to which its objects have been achieved. The last review was completed in 2009.
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Victoria’s response to this review that follows comments on the potential acute and long term affects of environmental damage to the very substance that makes up our planet: land, water and sky.
A reflective Victoria Cooper in the field ….PHOTO: Doug Spowart
The importance of Microbial life in the protection of, and biodiversity conservation in, the Australian environment.
My background in science is at a technical level working in both Human and Plant Pathology. I have also completed a PhD where my research examined the communication of freshwater issues in Australia and focussed on the interplay of cultural and creative visual narratives with a science project on aquatic fungi. This research brought together both my current practice in the visual arts and my past experience in science.
In my work I have witnessed the power of microbes as they shape our corporeal and environmental ecologies. When any of our physical systems become unbalanced or neglected these unseen co-inhabitants can become pathogenic impacting on our health and that of the planet. Alternatively if these organisms are lost from the many systems they support – life will cease to exist. For example a forest without fungi and bacteria, dead material would not be decomposed and recycled to renew the land.
My response to this review comments on the potential acute and long term affects of environmental damage to the very substance that makes up our planet: land, water and sky.
My concern is that this review is not addressing the following:
- The creation of a researchable archive on the renewable and sustainable effects of any impact on any microbiological agent. For example the change to the natural microbial community and populations on soil health from removing native grasses, or deforestation of old growth habitat; or the affects on the microbial environment in drying-out of critical wetlands that are drained and not replenished when water is available. If we create an imbalance in the microsphere, this will continue throughout the entire system.
- Create more professional and academic avenues of research to highlight the importance of a cross-discipline collaborative intelligence in this archive.
2.1 By including and financially supporting more broadly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Indigenous knowledge and experience;
2.2 Australia government initiatives and entrepreneurship for Research and Development into innovative forms of Sustainable and Renewable technology to provide new ways to live with, know and imagine the unique Australian microbiota; and
2.3 Recognizing the urgency with which this action is needed for this work to be undertaken.
The ecology of the micro-environment has developed over many millennia from the beginning of life on Earth. Micro-organisms are in every part of our existence: in and on our bodies, the air we breathe, the food we eat, our soils and waterways. Australia has uniquely developed systems that support our diverse and rich geology, flora and fauna.
The interconnected relationships of micro to macro need to be well understood, protected and maintained in order to continue to sustain life’s balance.
Victoria Cooper PhD
A copy of the EPBC ACT REVIEW Document can be downloaded – Click this link: epbc_act_review_discussion_paper_0
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Some of Victoria’s visual research work relating to the ideas embodied above…
Vicky’s a page from the The River book
Documentation of a page from the book The Island
A double-page spread from the artists’ book Being Present
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