Archive for the ‘Exhibitions’ Category
MARIS RUSIS: ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS @ Gallery Frenzy, Brisbane
Masonic Hall, Barcaldine
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The very nature of humanity is that each one who looks will see something different. So in these words, in this speech to open this exhibition, I’m in the privileged position to share what interests me about Maris Rusis’ original photographs. For a time I too was a disciple of the large format photography ‘zone’ – system discipline. I strove to develop what I’d call three skills: the conceptual – to see or previsualise; the technical to operate cameras and control chemistry; and the physical to lug the camera, all 50 kilos of it, to the place or subject of its use.
I found the romance of large format fieldwork is followed by the trial of the darkroom and the creation of a print reality – a manifestation of the subject as perceived by the photographer, at the time of capture. Chemistry, contact frames, darkness and the contemplative attention to time, temperature and agitation are an integral part of the process. So is, dare I say–image manipulation, dodging and burning-in to refine the distribution of tone, density and how these shape perception and direct the viewers eye as it rests on the image.
To bring an Australian light to the large format photograph Maris and I set out on a road trip from Brisbane to Canberra, Kosciuszko and Suggan Buggan in the late 1980’s. On this journey we shared rooms in cheap motels and backpackers, red wine and erudite conversation. Loading large format film holders in the cramped spaces of motel wardrobes and borrowed darkrooms we ventured into the high country and along roadsides. Photographing in the field was in part an endurance in the sweltering heat of mid-summer’s noon-day sun under the focussing cloth, and the privations of only being able to make 6-8 photographs a day – but each image was unique… a triumphant moment… a personal vision of light.
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Maris and I in a granite field with cameras in 1989
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Part of our large format journey included special access to the vaults of the National Gallery of Australia’s photography collection. On opening, the light entered each solander box and we peered into the contents. We held prints by Weston – Brett included, Adams (Ansel–not Robert), Minor White, Emmet Gowan and others. These were the masters whose works we could generally only encounter on the pages of books usually at reduced size. I remember at the end of that day we stood on the exit parapet of the NGA, as it was in the old days, and you commented: “From today we can view the masters of large format photography with a new kind of arrogance”. Meaning that what we were achieving technically and conceptually matched anything we saw in the gallery’s collection. In reflection we did this in Australian light and of Australian subjects far removed from the well-trodden ground of the American tradition.
While I continued into the early 1990s hunting photographs with the SINAR 10×8 in the field, I was seduced to explore an expanding frontier of photography with Diana, pinholes and ultimately digital. Maris remained true to attitudes, values and approaches to photographic process and image quality that are the essence of the thing itself. Light-lens-silver – a direct and simple transference through photonics guided at every increment by the photographer and their vision for the subject before them. The plunge of the image-making world into digital technologies usurped and liberalised the terminology, in particular the words ‘photographer’ and ‘photograph’. Subsequently, it seems now with the emancipation of imaging anyone can be a photographer and anyone can photograph – it’s that easy.
There was a time when I, like many, thought a photograph was infinitely reproducible and that the darkroom was a machine for making multiples – but each was a little different. The speed and repeatability of digital imaging became the ‘machine’ where each print is identical. Now we can value each gelatine silver photographic print as a bespoke unique state object – a handcrafted image where as two can be identical. Maris once postulated a theory that the photographer, in printing their photographs – in particular with dodging and burning-in, created two images. The finished print is a secondary image of the subject before the camera – the first image being the negative, and as the photographer uses their hands to do shadowy light work they create a self-portrait primary image.
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Views of Snow Gums, number 4
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This evening, through the photographs that hang on these walls, an experience is shared. The title of the exhibition ‘Original Photographs’ may be exactly what they are. Our viewing position for this work as stated, is located in the digital age – where contemporary technology and process is arguably antithetical to the exulted practice that created these original photographic objects before us. Now I ask – should the provenance of these framed works make a difference to how we look at and think about these photographic prints? Should there be a precondition to viewing this work that requires a study of the technique, the myth, the challenges, incentives and the rewards of those who work this way, and how we as viewers should respond? Or should there be nothing of that. A photograph is before us – look, connect, interpret, respond … then, cast your view to the next.
What then of these photographs? Some may think that these prints may well be from a dinosaurian photographic tradition. For me their existence proves that the ritual continues and that the photographer’s vision and the seductive quality of the photographic prints that emerge from the photographer’s toil are still valuable contributions to the art. And therein lies the importance of Maris Rusis and his work. Few have walked his path in the sunshine of single-mindedness, about living one’s life totally absorbed, at whatever cost – family, friends, poverty and pleasure, all secondary to the pursuit of personal photographic nirvana, usually of the real large format kind. Edward Weston once stated: ‘My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.’ Maris Rusis and Weston have many things in common.
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Doug Spowart
Written @ Girraween February 1, 2014.
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Maris and Doug ‘Selfie’ at the exhibition opening
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Maris has written a reply to this post that adds to this commentary of his work:
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It is an uncommon thing to invest some decades of effort in making pictures by one particular medium to the exclusion of all others. And an explanation is perhaps merited.
Firstly, everything Doug Spowart has covered in his blog is true and revalatory. It sets out key moments that propelled me in my committment to photography. And I thank Doug for the good start he gave me. But to keep going I had to support the conviction that my chosen medium has valuable properties that are not obtained or replicated by alternative means. I still continue to make pictures out of light-sensitive materials and offer by way of flagrant self justification the following essay:
In Defence of Light-Sensitive Materials.
The word photography was invented to describe what light-sensitive materials deliver: pictures that offer a different class of imaging from painting, drawing, or digital methods.
These “light-sensitive” pictures are photographs and the content of such pictures is the visible trace of a direct physical process. This is sharply different to painting, drawing, and digital imaging where picture content is the visible output of processed data. Some other imaging methods that do not process data include life casts, death masks, brass rubbings, wax impressions, coal peels, papier-maché moulds, and footprints.
There is a general idleness of thought that assumes any picture beginning with a camera is a photograph. Most casual references to digital pictures as photographs are motivated not by deceit but rather by the innocent and uncritical acceptance of the jargon “digital photography”; a saying which has become so banal and familiar that it largely passes unchallenged; except perhaps here, now, and by me.
I use light sensitive substances to make pictures because of the special relationship between such pictures and their subject matter. The wonder of this special relationship is also available to the aware viewer. Making realistic looking pictures long pre-dates photography. Old and new techniques include photo-realist painting, mezzotint, graphite drawing, gravure, and offset printing. Recently analogue and digital electronic techniques can deliver the appearance of abundant realism at trivial effort and cost . But although these pictures may mimic photographs but they do not invoke the unique one-step material bond between a subject and its photograph.
The physical and non-virtual genesis of pictures made from light-sensitive substances has far-reaching consequences:
Light sensitive materials are utterly powerless in depicting subject matter that does not exist. A true photograph of a thing is an absolute certificate for the existence of that thing; an existence proof at the level of physical evidence. Quite differently, data-based pictures at best approximate testimony under oath rather than evidence.
Light-made pictures require that the subject and the substances that will ultimately depict it have to be in each other’s presence at the same moment. True photographs cannot recreate times past. The future is similarly inaccessible. Since true photographs can only begin their existence in the fleeting present they constitute an absolute certificate that a particular moment in time actually existed.
Light-sensitive materials are blind to the imaginary, the topography of dreams, and the shape of hallucinatory visions. The option of making a picture from light sensitive materials offers an infallible way of distinguishing delusion from reality. A true photograph authenticates the proposition that the camera really did see something.
Light-sensitive substances neither selectively edit nor augment picture content. There is a one to one correspondence between points in a true photograph and places in real-world subject matter. This correspondence, also known as a transfer function, is immutable for all subject matter changes.
The sole energy input for a true photograph comes from an illuminated subject. The pre-existing internal chemical potential energy of the light-sensitive substances is sufficient to generate all the marks of which a photograph is composed. Other external energy inputs are not required. Remember, photography was invented in, described in, and works perfectly in a world without electricity.
Pictures made from light sensitive materials are different to paintings, drawings, and digital confections in that their authority to describe subject matter comes not from resemblance but from direct physical causation.
It is these unique qualities of true photography, its limitations and its profound certainties, that keep me committed to the medium as an integral and original form.
My light-generated pictures are produced one at a time, start to finish, and in full by my own hand. The work flow is mine. No part of it is down to assistants or back-room people toiling to flatter my skills so I will feel good about paying their fee. I will continue to make pictures out of light-sensitive substances even if it comes to the point where I have to synthesise those substances myself.
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MORE IMAGES FROM THE SHOW:
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Views of Snow Gums, number 38
Views of Snow Gums, number 40
Laneway, Winton
Open Air Cinema Fence, Winton
Shop Wall, Winton
Views of Snow Gums, number 4
Views of Snow Gums, number 11
Views of Snow Gums, number 31
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All photographs © Maris Rusis. Photograph of the two photographers ©Maris Ruusis and Doug Spowart.
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BOX of BOOKS Event – Toowoomba!
Looking at the books – Cobb+Co Museum, Toowoomba
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Around 35 photobook enthusiasts gathered at the Cobb+Co Museum on January 27 to view the Photobook Club’s Box of Books and talk about photobooks. The event brought together local photo identities John Elliott, Graham Burstow, David Seeto and Victoria Cooper. Eric Victor, Ian Poole and Qld College of Art Masters student Maureen Trainor came from the Brisbane side of the Range. The meeting took place in the gallery space of the ICON on ICONS photographic exhibition that also concluded on that day.
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Convener of the event Doug Spowart opens the Box of Books
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The seven books were viewed and discussed at length. Comments about the books included the following:
“Each book is a very personal communiqué”
“The books demand viewing at many different levels – the narrative, the design, the production, the conceptual nature of the work…”
“This is a very Eurocentric view – I wonder what the American view would look like?”
“How do these books compare with the Australian photobook scene?”
A great deal of discussion took place over the comment – “Where are the captions … the works that help me to understand what the photographer is trying to say?” One respondent commented on Roland Barthes’ concept of ‘The death of the author and the birth of the reader’ – meaning that the reader needs to connect with the images and draw on their own life experiences.
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Donald Webber’s Interrogations drew quite a few comments – tension and the power of the portraits made in such a circumstance.
Linda Seeto, Victoria Cooper, Hardy and Alison Ahlhaus looking at Webber’s Interrogations
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The crowd favourite was Anne Sophie Merryman’s Mrs. Merryman’s Collection … a superb design, delicate paper, the see-through of texts and the amazingly bizarre collection of post card photographs and comments.
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Mrs. Merryman’s Collection
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Paul Graham’s The Present and its gate-fold format presented a viewing challenge as each image or group of images needed to be revealed by folding-out the page – an extended haptic experience, and considering the size of the book, it slowed down the read and brought the busy street scenes to a slowed motion.
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Tony Coonan, Linda and David Seeto look at Paul Graham’s book
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The Box of Books will be in Brisbane on Monday the 3rd of February and then be off to New Zealand for the next stage in its journey.
Thanks to the Cobb+Co Museum for providing the venue. The Photobook Club and the publishers who donated the books for the opportunity for us to see, touch, and read these books.
Until the next Photobook Club event in our area….
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This Photobook Club BOX OF BOOKS event was coordinated by Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper of the Centre for Regional Arts Practice.
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Other images from the event…
Looking at a book…
Ann Alcock and Bev Lacey
Toula, Ian Poole and Louise
Tony Coonan, Victoria Cooper and Anne Howard
Judi Neuman and Phillipa Hodges
Graham Burstow and Maureen Trainor
Looking at some of the ephemera from the Box of Books
John Elliott and Eric Victor
Helen Gibbs and Lucy Robertson-Cunninghame
Gerry Saide looking closely at a book
Doug Spowart opens the box
Room view at the Cobb+Co Museum
The Cobb+Co Museum panorama
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The Photobook Club’s BOX of BOOKS in Toowoomba
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A BOOK for AUSTRALIA DAY, January 26, 2014
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It’s Australia Day!! We have a photobook on display in the Two Doors Gallery in 85 George Street the ‘Rocks’, Sydney that is a commentary on Australia Day, that we created on Australia Day in 2010.
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The collaborative book, called Australian Banquet, January 25/26, 1788 (variant #5), is a double-sided broadsheet cyanotype in rice paper, 37.6x77cm. There are 7 unique state variants of this work.
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The Australian Banquet in the window @ Two Doors … Photo: Dawne Fahey
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The artists’ statement for the work is as follows:
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Across Australia on January 26, people consume food in celebration of a free and dynamic Australian culture. This work comments on the ‘turning of the page’ in Australian history that Australia Day represents. One day — January 25th 1788, Indigenous people feasted on a diverse banquet of bush tucker (as they had for thousands of years). The next day —a new paradigm arrived with the table setting of the First Fleet. Australia Day importantly is a time to re-examine the status of the Indigenous perspective and their knowing of land, culture and history and how it underpins all that is celebrated in the diversity and identity of post-colonial Australia.
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How the work is to be viewed/read
1. At a tabletop setting view and contemplate the 25th of January side of the broadsheet.
January 25, 1788
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2. Then, pickup the broadsheet and turn it over as if reading a book – Contemplate.
January 26, 1788
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3. Finally hold the broadsheet up to a light thus enabling the interrelationship between the two
images to be considered. (Image shows variant #4)
January 25+26,1788 (combined) –Today’s view
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Drop in to the gallery if you’re in Sydney.
If you happen to be in ‘The Rocks’ on Monday 27th, the public holiday come along to Two Doors and see Picturing the Orchestral Family – and a selection of photographs by Dawne Fahey – and hear the Carreon Family Quartet performance – Tango from 2 – 3. They will also perform February 2nd – same time. Performing daily @ 5.30 pm is flautist Chloe Chung – Two Doors is very lucky to have these young people from Sydney Youth Orchestras helping us celebrate this exhibition !
Have a Great Australia Day…!
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© 2014 Dawne Fahey (gallery image) and ©2012 Doug Spowart+Victoria Cooper.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/
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THE PHOTOBOOK CLUB: Box of Books Event – Toowoomba!
The Photobook Club’s BOX of BOOKS arrives in Toowoomba
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In 2013, and now in 2014, a box of photobooks will be traveling over 30,000 miles, stopping off at each of the Photobook Club branches around the world in order to promote discussion of the physical photobook.
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Now, The Box of Books is in Toowoomba —- Queensland, Australia.
As part of the LAST DAY of the ICONS on ICONS show at the Cobb+Co Museum in Toowoomba featuring the work of John Elliott, Graham Burstow, David Seeto Victoria Cooper (photobooks) and Doug Spowart – a special viewing of the THE PHOTOBOOK CLUB’s BOX of BOOKS will be made available. Come and sit with some of the world’s best photobooks and turn the pages – and release the narrative that each book contains.
THE DATE: Between 1 – 3pm, January 27 – The AUSTRALIA DAY Holiday
THE VENUE: The Cobb+Co Museum, 27 Lindsay Street, Toowoomba.
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A small charge of $5 is being made to cover postage to the Boxes’ next destination in Auckland New Zealand.
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The book viewing and discussions will take place between 1-3pm. The Museum’s coffee shop is open for lunch as well as drinks and snacks throughout the afternoon until 4pm.
Take a road trip into the country – Visitors to the Cobb+Co Museum from outside the Toowoomba Region will gain FREE admittance if they advise that they are attending this special event.
This Photobook Club BOX OF BOOKS event is coordinated by Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper of the Centre for Regional Arts Practice.
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Cobb+Co Museum – Icons on Icons events
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What’s in the Box?
A big thanks to Mack Books (London), Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam) and also to Filipe Casaca who have all contributed books to this project. If you are a publisher or photographer who would like a book to be included in ‘Box of Books #2′ then please get in touch. The following books were chosen for the discussions of content, narrative and physical properties that I hope they will encourage – Matt from the Photobook Club
Another Language
Mårten Lange
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: Combining images of flora, fauna and natural phenomena in an intimate and beautifully crafted book, Lange teases out a subtle narrative – a meteor crashes, a landmass is visible and a distant planet occupies the final page – but the book is more akin to the workings of a scientist collecting specimens. Together the photographs create a cryptic and heterogeneous index of nature, with recurring shapes, patterns and texture, where the clarity and simplicity of the individual photographs contrasts with the enigmatic whole.
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Blue Mud Swamp
Filipe Casaca
(Self published, 2012)
The blurb: (Filipe Casaca) Blue Mud Swamp. The shoreline, hot and humid, is a postcard that attracts and invites Men to settle where the land meets the Yellow Sea. However, the reality is dissonant. Although surrounded by natural beauty, beaches and entertainment facilities, the city and its urban spaces transmits, as a whole, a feeling of artificiality. In some cases the abundance created a certain degradation and abandonment. With a splendor that takes us back to a recent past, a certain melancholy is present, as happens with all that was new, colorful and perfect but perished with time.
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Interrogations
Donald Webber
(Schilt, 2012)
The blurb: Interrogations is the result of [Webber’s] personal quest to uncover the hidden meaning of the bloody 20th Century. In dialogue with writer Larry Frolick – whose own ancestors had been decimated in the final months of WW II – Weber insistently and provocatively addresses his questions both to the living survivors and to the ghosts of the State’s innumerable victims, resurrecting their final hours by taking their point of view, and performing a kind of incantatory meditation over their private encounters with Power.
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Lick Creek Line
Ron Jude
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: Ron Jude’s new book, Lick Creek Line, extends and amplifies his ongoing fascination with the vagaries of photographic empiricism, and the gray area between documentation and fiction. In a sequential narrative punctuated by contrasting moments of violence and beauty, Jude follows the rambling journey of a fur trapper, methodically checking his trap line in a remote area of Idaho in the Western United States. Through converging pictures of landscapes, architecture, an encroaching resort community, and the solitary, secretive process of trapping pine marten for their pelts, Lick Creek Line underscores the murky and culturally arbitrary nature of moral critique.
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Liquid Land
Rena Effendi
(Schilt, 2012)
The blurb: (Rena Effendi) Next to my father’s dead but iridescent butterflies, my photographs show life in some of the world’s most polluted areas, near Baku, where I was born and grew up. In my mind, the contrasting images gravitate towards each other – as I have to my father. Since working on this book I have gotten to know him much better than when he was alive. Salty Waters is the translation from Persian of the ‘Ab-sheuran’ Peninsula; in and around Baku, its main city, the earth is breathing with petroleum fumes, as oil oozes to the surface, turning it liquid. The Caspian Sea hugs the eagle-beak shaped land, salting its gas-pocked soil.
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Mrs. Merryman’s Collection
Anne Sophie Merryman
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: The book, Mrs. Merryman’s Collection, presents the postcards which together form the story of two intertwined lives – one life lived travelling the world through the postcard images, the other a child and then adult whose life and relationship to her own history and her future were influenced by the collection. While Anne-Marie and Anne Sophie never met, both their lives were inspired by the postcard collection – a relationship that was born, and continues to flourish, in the realms of the imagination.
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The Present
Paul Graham
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: The Present is Paul Graham’s contribution to this legacy. The images in this book come unbidden from the streets of New York, but are not quite what we might expect, for each moment is brought to us with its double – two images taken from the same location, separated only by the briefest fraction of time. We find ourselves in sibling worlds, where a businessman with an eye patch becomes, an instant later, a man with an exaggerated wink; a woman eating a banana walks towards us, and a small focus shift reveals the blind man right behind her.
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Also in the box are other items that add to the idea and object of the photobook.
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A small charge of $5 is being made to cover postage to the Boxes’ next destination in Auckland New Zealand.
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‘Our Home on the Range’ exhibition @ QCP
Maurice Ortega opens the QCP Exhibition – November 30, 2013 … PHOTO: Doug Spowart
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DOUG CURATES QCP STUDENT EXHIBITION: “Our Home on the Range”
Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE Certificate IV in Photoimaging students recently presented their work in Brisbane as part of the Queensland Centre for Photography’s Undergraduate Bridging Program. The images in the series “Our Home on the Range” are indicative of the intention for the program to allow students to develop both creative and personal directions in their studies. Throughout 2013 the exhibiting photographers have worked with teachers Alison Ahlhaus, Sheryleigh Burns, Bev Lacey, Rachel Susa and Doug Spowart. The exhibition was curated by Doug Spowart.
The QCP Undergraduate Photo Media Bridging Program profiles the work of emerging artists who are currently studying photo media at an Australian higher learning institution. The program provides a bridge between higher learning institutions, students and the QCP, providing an insight into work currently being produced by undergraduates recognising the outstanding cultural investment made by institutions and lecturers across Australia.
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The Our Home on the Range exhibition @ QCP ….PHOTO: Doug Spowart
A ‘selfie’ with Kirsten Butters and her work ….PHOTO: Doug Spowart
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Here is a gallery of the Our Home on the Range photographs …
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Jesse – Rawr Vanity by Kirsten Butters
The Colours of Light by Craig Seibel
St Petersburg by Carolyn Johnson
A chemistry experiment by Perri Hammond
Rest in Pieces by Anna Schwenke
The Planet of Garden by Linsey Walker
Shoot ‘Em Up by Rhianen Dodd
The colours of tranquiity by Sandra McEwan
A Lone Man by Riry Foran
Kirsten showing work to Rock+Roll photographer and publisher Dane Beesley ….PHOTO: Doug Spowart
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Toowoomba’s Mail Story about the exhibition
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QCP Logo
Thank you to the Queensland Centre for Photography for the support to these emerging photographers.
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QCP Director Maurice Ortega and Deputy Camilla Birkeland at the opening
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Copyright in the photographs remains with the the photographers.
THE EXPO 88 PHOTO SHOW – 25 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 twenty-five years ago, January 1989 – the people of Brisbane were beginning to lament the passing of EXPO’88. While the six-month adventure opportunity to encounter the world and its cultures and cuisine was to form lasting memories for some, others may have recollections of the crush of interstate and overseas visitors, the nightly flamboyant fireworks displays and the inevitable queuing to visit everything from food stalls, to exhibitions and toilets. 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.
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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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FROM SMALL THINGS … : Queensland Small Towns Documentary Project
Queensland Small Towns: Documentary Project – Invite
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Queensland Small Towns: Documentary Project
Brisbane Powerhouse, 12 November to 1 December, 2013
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Queensland’s regional areas are fast becoming the most common subject for the scrutiny of the photodocumentary image-makers. In August the Central Queensland Project exhibition was shown at the Powerhouse in Brisbane and now, only a few months later, another show entitled Queensland Small Towns: Documentary Project is hung in the same venue. This new contribution to the documentation of regional communities is a student/lecturer project initiated by the three big Institutions: University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology and the Queensland College of Art (QCA).
With the support of academic staff, students of these photography and photojournalism faculties descended on the Queensland towns of Moranbah and Dalby. The exhibition’s coordinator Earle Bridger from QCA, chose these two regional localities because of the impact of mining. To add contemporary photodocumentary rigor to the activity, professional photographers: Russel Shakespeare, Adam Ferguson and Shehab Uddin were collaborators and advisors to the fieldwork.
The project’s mission, as stated in exhibition press, was to capture: ‘The stories, characters and everyday lives of people in Queensland outback towns’1. They further claim that: ‘this unique photo-documentary project [will] reflect[s] the changing face of rural Queensland.’ 2
This project was instigated to provide an in-field experience for the students. They were charged with the challenge of avoiding the traditional news story and to: ‘capture a visually appealing and thought-provoking narrative to a high-professional standard.’ 3
The exhibition at the Brisbane Powerhouse was extensive–the photographic images and video interviews were shoehorned into every available space. This made viewing of the show a little like a ‘hide and seek’ exercise. Its curation within this space created a fragmented view confusing the holistic flow of the exhibition.
Queensland Small Towns: Documentary Project – Installation … Photo: Doug Spowart
Queensland Small Towns: Documentary Project – Video and Photo installation … Photo: Doug Spowart
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Under the tutelage of lecturers and the photodocumentary practitioners assigned the project, as well as study, research and personal preparation, one may think that these primary concerns are well covered. However there is one other critical factor–The preconditioning from existing media overexposure and hype. This rhetoric includes the following: That these small towns, besieged by the extraordinary pressures of the extractive mining industries, are places in a state of flux between the perceived benevolent farming practices of the past and the boisterous bully of mining. These once sleepy rural places are now zones of friction between itinerant workers, inadequate infrastructure, fractured families and ‘fracked’ communities. Any documentary commentator must not let this prejudice impede their impartial reportage. Furthermore one must consider methodological and ethical issues around the selection of subject/s, the gaining of access and trust and the authenticity of the resulting work.
All that aside, what of the exhibition Queensland Small Towns: Documentary Project? What I found was a proficient and diverse presentation of contemporary photodocumentary work. Mixed in amongst the contemporary trend of the bland document aesthetic were emotive and sensitive photographs of private lives in difficult times. Images were grouped as mini photo-essays enabling a concept or a subject to be pursued.
Importantly the opportunity provided to these students and the lecturers to get into the field is one of the best lessons they both can have. As mentor Russell Shakespeare comments: ‘I think these projects are so important on every level. To get students out working on self generated stories and also for the Town to have a group of photographers recording “History” as they see it, and then to be archived by the State Library, hopefully this project will continue on throughout other Qld Towns in years to come.’ 4
Unlike the financial reality that students may encounter in their post graduation world, a $50,000 Arts Queensland Creative Partnership Grant funded the Small Towns Documentary Project5. And fittingly, considering the generous budget for the project, the photographs and video works will be gifted to the people of Queensland by their inclusion in the permanent collection of the State Library of Queensland.
This work will add to a significant archive for the future, however I’m concerned about the ‘thought-provoking narrative’ and its importance now. The exhibition at the Brisbane Powerhouse only marginally serves the purpose and power of contemporary documentary work … to communicate. No mention is given to exhibitions in Dalby and Moranbah–the communities that gave the project subject matter to image and document. The project is also left wanting in the application of eJournalism platforms like YouTube, Facebook, blogs and websites. Googling the project one encounters variations of the same succinct media release without external links to any online archive that says what was done, who did it and most importantly, provide a space for the communities documented to share and extend their stories.
The domain of the photodocumentary practitioner is not just the creation of material for the archive–its perhaps more important role is now, being in and of the times, and the communities and people who shared stories and submitted their lives to the gaze of these lens men and women. These stories are required now to inform, to cajole, to stir commentary and demand corporate and political acknowledgement, response and action. That’s where documentary photography does its best work …
Dr Doug Spowart
December 27, 2013
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1 http://brisbanepowerhouse.org/events/2013/11/12/queensland-small-towns-photo-documentary-project/
2 Ibid
3 http://www.uq.edu.au/sjc/qld-towns-project
4 Online correspondence from Russell Shakespeare
5 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/earle-bridger/b/521/737
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What follows are images and videos from the exhibition.
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Please Note: The photographs in this exhibition were presented as multiple image groups – only single images represent the photographer’s body of work. I have included the photographer’s statement under most images to give an understanding of their project and the context for the work. Most images in this review are from camera exposures within the exhibition environment and may not represent the image/s accurately due to reflections and uneven lighting.
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“Al Phillips, Drilling Supervisor + Chris Mannion, Driller, Moranbah” … Photo: Adam Ferguson and Brodie Standen, 2013
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Potential buyers survey a pen of cattle at the Dalby sale yards. The weekly auctions are Australia’s larget one-day cattle sale, with over 6,000 head of cattle passing through each week.…Photo: Kimberley McCosker
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“Joyce Coss”
83 years old with “Waddles” her Sliky Cross.
63 years living in Warra.
Photo: Russell Shakespeare 2013
Beyond the sporting ovals, on the outskirts of Moranbah, Sean lives in a trailer. The trailer is powered by a petrol generator and drinking water tanks are filled at a family member’s house. He lives there by choice, a house has “too many walls”. Separated from his wife Sean shares custody of their 5 boys. Charlie, Darcy, Bailey, Harley, & Riley spend each weekend with their Dad and I was fortunate enough to spend a few days with them while they visited over school holidays. With Moranbah as a backdrop, a town where much of the population’s main objective is obtaining and retaining material wealth, getting rich and getting out, Sean’s lifestyle begs a closer look at what separates need and want. I would like to thank Charlie, Darcy, Bailey, Harley, Riley & Sean for their hospitality & allowing me to tag along with them. Photo: Cory Wright
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“Moranbah McDonald’s which lies on the outskirts of town” … Photo: Julia Whitwell
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The Wilkie Creek Rural Fire Brigade in conjunction with other local fire brigades, coordinate necessary hazard reduction fires, as well as keeping life threatening fires at bay during the high risk summer season. Pictured [in my project] are their lives on a daily basis, as well as their involvement in a hazard reduction fire completed near Lake Broadwater in October, 2013. Photo: Eva Turek-Jewkes
Four videos by students from the University of Queensland School of Journalism and Communication:
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“Grassdale Feedlots”
A curios 2 year old, 620kg Hereford steer in Grassdale Feedlots state of the art facility (to extreme left of series). Pens are cleared every 50 days as part of the facilities self-audited quality and health assurance measures. World class traceability systems allow staff to track, monitor and isolate specific data on each individual beast, including birth date, purchase date and origin, weight, breed, feeding ration and medical record. Established in 2008, Grassdale Feedlot is a 13,000 acre property 30kms south of Dalby centre. Currently with over 38,000 head of cattle and a capacity of up to 50,000 head, the feedlot boasts one of the largest and most technologically advanced feedlot facilities in Australia. The estimated $60 million facility employs over 50 staff and is a major driver in the economic stability of the Dalby, Millmerran and Chinchilla region and remains at the forefront of grain-fed beef production in Australia employing some ground breaking technologies in milling and feeding processes. … Photo installation: Victoria Nikolova
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“Grassdale Feedlots” … Photo installation (detail): Victoria Nikolova
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Garden Bed. Cunningham Street … Photo: Liss Fenwick
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“Some Trash, Others Treasure”
Pioneer Park Museum in Dalby seems a place suspended in time, somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century. Located on Black Street – once very quiet and peaceful but nowadays one of the main truck parking spots in town – the museum is a magical space with colonial houses and antique machinery, accompanied by rustling of leaves and bird’s trill. Elaine and Daniel Fox, the main founders, have lived on-site for almost 11 years, taking care of this magical place on a daily basis. They began 23 years ago with only seven antique tractors. Today, they can boast of one of the largest collections of operating antique agricultural machinery in Queensland – some of which date back to the early 19th century. Together with a few passionate volunteers they keep the place alive and once a year, during Field Weekend, the town of Dalby travels in time to discover again the old knowledge, tradition and way of living of their ancestors. The Museum is mostly financed by an annual fund from the local government, entry tickets, and the craft shop income and the Field Day. However, it is hard enough to keep it working, with a fast developing technology and little funding; they struggle to keep their museum operating in the modern, quickly changing mining town, that Dalby has become. … Photo: Kasia Strek
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“No Access”
This work is not against mining. For whether it be the computers we use to stay connected, the solar panels we purchase that make us feel socially responsible or the cameras I use to tell stories, mining is embedded into the fabric of the 21st century. The debate should not be whether or not to mine, but rather how is mining to be controlled. What became obvious in Moranbah was that combined the mining companies controlled the political and social agendas. Through ostensibly generous salaries, subsidized housing and rare community donations mining companies have become the pushers and the population the addicts. Mine workers are afraid to speak to strangers for fear they are the media. Criticism is only whispered when in the company of friends. The right to have an opinion that may differ from the company has been severely eroded. To express that opinion puts job and home at risk. No Access argues that Australia should retain exclusive rights to its resource management. It argues for controlled mining. But most of all it presents a snapshot of the liberties we have sold in order to satisfy those who seek to maximize profits and minimize social responsibility. Moranbah. David Lloyd. 2013.
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The photographers and video producers retain all copyright in their images and presentations. Text and installation photographs © 2013 Doug Spowart
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BACK STORY: The Icons & Revered Australiana Show
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ICONS Logo
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The Icons & Revered Australiana show: Twenty – Five Years On
The ICONS on ICONS exhibition at the Cobb+Co Museum in Toowoomba features 5 local photographers. For the show I have selected 26 gelatine silver photographs drawn from my archive. They were originally prepared for the Australian Bi-centennial celebrations in 1988 – 25 years have elapsed and yet the images are as fresh and evocative as ever. For me the work represents an important aspect of my photographic and photobook work – where the narrative of life and culture is expressed through a set of images and sometimes accompanied by a complimentary text.
So here is the back story of my Icons & Revered Australiana
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Doug Spowart
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I have had a lifetime interest in the Australian idiom, slang and its stories. This body of work represents the culmination of a personal investigation into what are seminal identifiers of our culture and the way the Australian condition has shaped our language. In my early teenage years I read most of John O’Grady’s books like They’re a weird mob and Gone Fishin. His dictionary of Australian-isms Aussie English was a particular favourite. At that time I would encounter people, mainly older people, who spoke using the language defined by Sidney J Baker’s or what Afferbeck Lauder called Strine, (a condensation of Australian with an emphasis on the latter part of the word = STRINE).
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Throughout my life I have travelled around Australia, firstly as a child with my family then later with friends and from the1980s onward as a tour leader on outback safaris. I always felt close to the land and the Australian condition and was fascinated by the stories and the vernacular language by which it was described. I met outback characters including songwriter/performer Ted Egan, before his Northern Territory Governor commission, who immortalised these Australian-isms and stories in song. I was also influenced by a library of photographers like Jeff Carter, George Farwell, Douglas Baglin and perhaps even Rennie Ellis who made photographs and told stories in their photobooks. Inspiration also came from Barry Humphreys, Walkabout magazine and the works of painters like Russell Drysdale, Hans Heysen and Sydney Nolan.
From my experiences I decided to make a selection of things Australian that I considered were so embedded in culture that they could be considered as icons and revered with a religious fervour. I resolved to call the exhibition Icons & Revered Australiana. To provide an extra personal challenge to the project I limited my selection to an A to Z list representing a range of ideas, subjects, myths and localities. I then embarked upon a 4 state and territory journey to make images. While most images were deliberate and targeted some photographs were made along the way as opportunistic discoveries. I do remember specifically driving into Sydney, putting a wire coat hanger under my arm and walking down to the Sydney Opera House to photograph the bridge.
The Icons show was presented at Imagery Gallery in March 1988 and I think, well received. However the Courier Mail critic, a friend of mine of the time, was not impressed – his headline read There’s better work to come! I did ponder the thought that there may have been a sub-plot to his review. The exhibition went on to show at another venue in Queensland and individual images, such as the BIG Coat Hanger received accolades, was published in many journals, and went on to be one of my signature images. After the show was over the exhibition was de-framed and the mounted images sequestered away in archival solander boxes.
But what of this current iteration of the Icons & Revered Australiana body of work? Twenty-five years may have elapsed and yet these pre-digital gelatine silver images are as fresh as ever – a testimony to the special nature of infrared and black+white analogue photography. In revisiting the original catalogue text, I’ve re-connected with the thread of humour, irony and pastiche that has always run through my work.
While those who knew these aspects of life, culture and language intimately, and practised it daily, may have long passed on, Icons & Revered Australiana may still resonate with contemporary audiences. I do not expect that everyone will begin to use terms like ‘Bonza’, ‘Sheila’ and ‘Wouldn’t be dead for quids’, although we do encounter this kind of vernacular language in contemporary song writing, (particularly in country and western music), prose and poetry. And for a while we enjoyed it in the wonderfully expressive Strine of Steve Irwin.
These Icons and Revered Australiana are just the tip of the great myriad of things Australian. Deep down, within us, is a kind of ‘knowing’ of our Australian-isms, and how they have defined us and continue to define us as a people and a country.
Doug Spowart
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SO HERE THEY ARE: My ‘A to Z’ Icons & Revered Australiana
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A = Ayers Rock – Revered as the largest monolith in the world, Ayers Rock is now known by its traditional Aboriginal name Uluru.
B = The Black Stump. It was once believed that the black stump was the limit of possible human habitation beyond which nothing existed but useless land and desert. Today, it’s revered by a roadside stop featuring a Black Stump storyboard and black painted stump icon, a car park, BBQ and toilet. And lots of people have come to live on ‘the other side’. Near Coolah, New South Wales.
C = The Big Coat Hanger – Slang for the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
D = Dunny – The Australian out-house or toilet is affectionately known by this name.
A coach camp dunny Birdsville, Queensland.
E = Eucalyptus – This is an iconic plant embedded in the Australia psyche; from the arts to the construction of our towns, and the source of therapeutic aromatic oil – a familiar memory in everyday households of Australia. On the Heysen Trail, Mount Lofty Ranges, S.A.
F = Fosters – An historically famous Australian beer. Barry Caves, The Northern Territory.
G = Gundagai – Five miles from Gundagai is the location described in the bush verse about a bullocky’s bad luck. While the popular version of this story makes a hero of the bullocky’s dog who ‘sat on’ his tucker box protecting it from harm. However anyone reading the original poem would come to the conclusion that the ultimate in bad luck had befallen the bullocky – that the dog had actually ‘shat in’ the tucker box. In this image of the tourist memorial near Gundagai a statue of the dog ‘sits’ on the tucker box while kids steal money from the wishing fountain in front.
H = Holden – The quintessential Australian motor vehicle. Fish Lane, South Brisbane, Queensland.
I = Iron (Corrugated) – The most common and versatile building material for outback structures. Olary, S. A.
J = Joe Blake – Equals ‘snake’ in Australian rhyming slang. Mannahill, South Australia.
K = Kangaroo – An endemic Australian species often so prolific in number that road signs are erected to warn motorists of their presence. The signs are also useful as a test of shooters skill if a shortage of the real thing exists. Judging by this example the Roos have a fair chance. West of Nyngan, New South Wales.
L = Luna Park – A Temple of fun, frivolity and scary rides for Sydney-siders and Melbournites. St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria.
M = Meat Pie – The eating of a meat pie and tomato sauce is a celebrated Australian rite or sacrament, and if you come from Victoria the Four’n Twenty variety would have once been considered the best! Broadbeach, Queensland.
N = Ned Kelly – Located at Glenrowan this colonial sacred site is the place where the Australian folk hero Ned Kelly made his notorious last stand against the Victorian Police. Erected to enable ‘pilgrims’ to ‘revere’ the place, these modern day structures house a multitude of Ned Kelly tokens and souvenirs. Rather than recognise this as a solemn and tragic clash between authority and the underclass, these souvenirs often seem to parody the event. Here, the matches are a strange connection to the fact that the Victorian Police set fire to the Kelly gang’s refuge and burned it down to enable his capture. Glenrowan, Victoria.
O = Outback. An open gate, and two tyre tracks pointing toward infinity best expresses the great expanse of wide-open space that is the outback. Near Scopes Range Bore Western, New South Wales.
P = Pub. Revered as the typical lonely outback pub the Birdsville hotel is so inundated with visitors for the annual races that the traveller’s empty beer cans are removed each morning with a front-end loader and a tip truck. Birdsville, Western Queensland.
Q = Quid. The pre-decimalization equivalent of two dollars, often associated with value statements like ‘wouldn’t be dead for quids’ and, ‘not the full quid’. Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane, Queensland.
R = Red Heads & Red Backs. Both being red these two Australian items can spell danger. Queensland Museum, Brisbane.
S = Sheep. The Australia economy was once described as living off the sheep’s back. Immortalized here is a giant merino variety attracting pilgrims to its past glory. Goulburn, New South Wales.
T = Thong. Casual Australian footwear. Western Pains Zoo, Dubbo, New South Wales.
U = Ute. Invented by Australians both in concept and name. Longreach, Queensland.
V = Vegemite. A black vegetable extract used as a spread on toast or Salada biscuits.
W = Waltzing Matilda. Shown here is a shrine erected by the McKinlay Shire Council to mark the location where Banjo Paterson wrote the Australian anthem about a swagman’s demise on stuffing a jumbuck (sheep) in his tuckerbag. Combo Waterhole near Kynuna, Queensland.
X = Xanthorrhoea. The botanical name for the Australian native plant commonly referred to as the grass tree. Near Canungra, Queensland.
Y =Yabbie. Any form of the Australian freshwater crayfish of the genus Cherax. Yabbying or catching yabbies is a favourite pastime of Australian kids. Near Nerang, Queensland.
Z = Zack. The colloquial term for a pre-decimal coin with a value of 5 cents, usually associated with statements of worthless value, hence ‘not worth a zack’ – pertaining here to barren outback country. Near Yunta, South Australia.
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This unique state complete exhibition set is available for purchase – Contact me for details
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Cobb+Co Museum – Icons on Icons events
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Images and text © Doug Spowart
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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COOPER+SPOWART to talk @ Cobb+Co Museum Dec 13
The Roundabout Clocktower from Weiley’s Hotel balcony
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CLICK HERE TO BOOK ON THE COBB+CO WEBSITE
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In the Dark Room with… Cooper+Spowart
In this talk we will discuss a number of topics and including:
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A commentary on the works in the ICONS on ICONS exhibition
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Our Nocturne residency projects around Australia
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How to make amazing Nocturne Photographs
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Our use of Social Media to connect art with the community.
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Attendees may wish to conclude their night activities @ Cobb+Co with a visit to the nearby Christmas Wonderland Spectacular in Queens Park
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St James’ Catholic Church
Outside the Grafton Hotel
The Subway – The Nocturne Muswellbrook Project
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VIEW A VIDEO OF THE ICONS SHOW FEATURING THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
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TO BOOK THE EVENT
http://www.shop.qm.qld.gov.au/cobbandco/in-the-dark-room-with-doug-and-victoria.html
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Cobb+Co Museum – Icons on Icons
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CENTRAL QLD PROJECT: REVIEW published in Queensland Review
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The latest issue of the journal Queensland Review features a review by us of the exhibition The Central Queensland Project that was shown at the Powerhouse Brisbane from 22 July to 18 August, 2013.
As the journal has publishing rights over their commissioned review we are unable to publish the text here. The review can be accessed from Cambridge Journals with the following links–a charge applies unless you are able to gain access through an academic institution or library.
Queensland Review, ,Volume20, Issue02, December 2013 pp 238-240
http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1321816613000329
As an introduction to the piece we provide the following:
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Queensland, its society and natural resources, has been the source of investigation by photographers for over 150 years. In the 1860s surveyor and photographer Richard Daintree created a quantitative analysis of the region’s potential for development. Associated with this record was a significant visual document in the form of photographs. In the lead up to Australia’s Bicentennial of white settlement the Queensland Art Gallery commissioned 6 photographers under the title Journeys North, to travel the state and: ‘produce a portfolio of photographs on the theme of community life in Queensland’ (Williamson 1988: p5). Now, nearly 25 years after this latest project, two photographers, Kelly Hussey-Smith and Alan Hill, have travelled north with cameras to document the current life and situations of people far away from the urbanized southeast corner.
The products of this latest documentary coverage were presented as the exhibition The Central Queensland Project (CQP) at the Powerhouse in Brisbane from July 22 to August 18, 2013. In exhibition material the photographers claim that:
Given the complexity of the modern economy, and the insularity of city life, many of us are blind to what lies beyond the city limits. Through this project we seek to gain insight into the lives, values and experiences of Central Queenslanders (Hill and Hussey-Smith 2013).
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Hill, A. and K. Hussey-Smith. (2013). “About: Central Queensland Project ” Retrieved 25 July 2013, from http://centralqldproject.com/about/.
Williamson, C. (1988). Journeys North – Photographic Practice in Queensland in the 1980s: one aspect. Q. A. Gallery. Brisbane, Queensland, Queensland Art Gallery.
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A selection of installation photographs as well as images and captions commented on in the review are published here courtesy of the photographers Kelly Hussey-Smith and Alan Hill:
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Installation triptich ….Photos: Doug Spowart
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An exhibition visitor is photographed before the artwork Postcards From The Shires …Installation photo: Doug Spowart
Postcards from the Shires
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The New Village ..Installation photo: Doug Spowart
The New Village
With 3048 beds, The MAC Coppabella is one of the largest workers villages in Australia and larger than many towns in the region. Up to 1000 people will check in or out on any given day.
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Three Moon Motel, Monto. FIFO and DIDO have entered the Australian vocabulary, along with debates about their social impacts. As a result, accommodation is often difficult to find, and motels have become temporary homes for transient workers.
Caterpillar Cowboy
Greg Barr introduced us to the phenomena of the Caterpillar Cowboy, which he describes himself as, being a ‘Cat’ machinery operator in the mines who is really a cowboy at heart. He and his partner Debbie run a modest property where they spend half the week on the land with their crops, cattle, and horses, and the other half of the week in the mines to support their rural lifestyle.
Karlaa
FIFO work does not just apply to mining. Karlaa works legally as a FIFO sex worker in the Central Queensland region. In 2010 Karlaa was asked not to return to a motel she had been working from discretely for two years after the proprietors realised she was a sex worker. She took the motel to court claiming discrimination on the basis of her profession. She initially lost this case, as it was found the motel did not discriminate against her because she was a sex worker, but because she was running her business from their premises. Many feared the decision would send the industry underground, resulting in unsafe working conditions and less transparency. Karlaa appealed the decision and in 2012 it was ruled that discrimination had taken place and the decision revoked. However, in November that year the Queensland Government made changes to the anti-discrimination act making it legal for moteliers and hoteliers to refuse sex workers accommodation.
Karlaa understands her profession may not appeal to everyone, but believes she has as much right as other businesses to take advantage of opportunities in the region.
From the ‘Transmission’ series
A section of the 540-kilometre long coal seam gas pipeline currently under construction crosses a property near Thangool. The pipeline stretches from southern Queensland to a liquefaction plant on Curtis Island near Gladstone.
From the ‘Extraction’ series
View towards Dawson Mine Complex, Moura.
From the ‘Transmission’ series
Coal and electricity are inextricably linked. In the first half of the 20th century, Brisbane’s electricity came from power stations in the city that were fuelled by coal from Ipswich. Now Queensland is part of a complex energy network not only spanning the state and the nation, but as the world’s largest coal exporter, the globe. Powerlines outside Middlemount.
From the ‘Extraction’ series
Export ready semi-hard coking coal in a Bowen Basin coal mine.
From the ‘Extraction’ series
Coal mining in the Central Queensland region is a 24-hour operation. The night shift begins in a Bowen Basin coal mine near Mooranbah.
From the ‘Extraction’ series
Coal mining in the Central Queensland region is a 24-hour operation. Night shift in a Bowen Basin coal mine near Mooranbah.
From the ‘Transmission’ series
Tannum Sands, south of Gladstone. In addition to being a major coal port, Gladstone is the destination for several major coal seam gas pipelines snaking their way through the Central Queensland landscape. The pipelines will deliver gas to three major liquefaction and export facilities currently under construction on Curtis Island.
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Photos © 2013 The Central Queensland Project Kelly Hussey-Smith and Alan Hill and installation photos Doug Spowart.
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