Over the last ten years I have had many conversations with Juno about her work and its need to be published to tell the story of The Movement as well as recognise the extensive documentary archive that she had created. Such a publication would celebrate her life’s work as a photo-activist.
Last year, Juno was finally able to publishus her extensive document of The Movement. About the time of it being launched she forwarded a copy of the book to me. What follows is an essay by me commenting on Juno which may help us to understand her motivation and what sustains her in her undertaking of this level of witnessing for fifty years.
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Juno Gemes in the exhibition Up Close at Fireworks Gallery 2015
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The totemic power inherent in the photographic image comes from the subtitle power of recognition and connectivity between people. These are the dynamics I work from.
After fifty years of prodigious and dedicated activity in photographically documenting Indigenous life and challenges in Australia Juno Gemes has finally published a book to house an edited selection of photographs from her exceptional archive. The book, entitled Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of The Movement for Indigenous Rights is a weighty publication, not unlike the topic of its contents. In turning the pages of the book it would seem that Juno and her camera were there to record every aspect of Indigenous life. Photographs, mainly in black&white range from people – both the significant and famous to ordinary people living on traditional ancestral lands to major and minor protest events and moments where recognition and respect has been achieved.
In 1995 edition of the Photofile Juno Gemes posed the question: “What can a woman do with a camera?”[ii] Today, with the publication of this latest book we can now reflect upon her question and come to a conclusive answer.
How does one describe Juno Gemes? For me she is some kind of a rhizomic individual, a chameleon, and a shape-shifter. She is everywhere for everyone and watch out if you are on the wrong side – particularly if it is to do with injustice. There is more to Juno Gemes. The manifesto that drives her is deeply and often quite vocally expressed is rooted in social justice. Central to her personal crusade are concepts relating to humanity, culture/s and communication.
In 2003 she posed the following observations and questions in relation to what motivates her work: “If cultural difference is the true wealth of humanity … why is it that people from one culture find it so difficult to recognise the cultures of others? If our sense of culture–our value system–is fragmented and broken, how can we heal it? How does mythic thought function for different peoples?”[iii] Her strategy in responding to these questions are: “… to be curious and ask the difficult questions is the crucible of art.”[iv]
Over fifty years her photographs have become powerful statements, they are authentic, they respectfully bear witness and give voice to issues of Aboriginal identity and presence on the land. Gemes’ photographs were distributed in all kinds of media, not only those of the Movement itself but also in political and academic papers and mainstream newspapers like the Sydney Morning Herald.
The art of the camera and the photograph became her way of dealing with the difficult questions of the times – Australia and its treatment and recognition of its first peoples. But Gemes’ approach to photography may not have been the traditionally accepted ‘impartial’ documentary style but rather more inclusive, active and interactive motivated by her, and her subject’s desire for authenticity in the story that is told through her photographs. Rather than calling herself a documentary photographer, Gemes considers her work photo-activism. This stance is based on advice given to her by many of her mentors and teachers including UK photographers Jo Spence and David Hurn. In 1979 at a workshop in Venice photographer Lisette Model counselled Juno advising that: “You do not photograph with your camera but with your eyes, your head and your heart…”
In 1978 when photographing on Mornington Island Juno was to ask: “What images should I make? What do you want your fellow Australian to see?” The answer from the Aboriginal community was: “Show them that we are still here, we been here all along. Show them that our culture is still strong. Show them that, my girl.”[v] Juno made photographs then, and ever since, as an advocate of this simple request.
Due to the photo-activism approach to photography she was not always successful in getting what she wanted published. In 1982 she documented the land rights marches associated with the Commonwealth Games Action Protests in Brisbane. When she offered her images to the Sydney Morning Herald the pictorial editor said: “Juno, I can’t publish this, it’s clear what side you’re on. What about your objectivity?”[vi] She replied: “Objectivity is fiction. It’s a refusal to take a conscious position. There can be no fence–sitting on this issue. Pictures you are publishing also have a clear position. A negative position not informed by what this action is really about.”[vii]
Juno Gemes signs her book PROOF, Sydney 2017
Over time Juno Gemes’ photographs have become a comprehensive record of the times, and with camera in hand, she continues to amass and archive of critical and sublime moments of Aboriginal culture, life and those who and connect with it. What cannot be left out in this story is the significant support that Juno Gemes has given to an entourage of Aboriginal photographers in all fields of practice from personal documentation to the highest levels of art photography.
In reflection on Juno’s approach to her work, one looks for defining moments in her life that underpin and inspire her dedication, empathy, respect and creativity. She references being born in Hungary and coming, as a child, to Australia. As a child she talks of questioning the history of this country that was taught in her classroom. She also speaks about how her life was disrupted by dispossession from her homeland. In a Photofile journal in 1995 she recounted one of her earliest childhood memories that shaped her life: “… carried out of my homeland, Hungary, on my father’s shoulders; he was walking in knee-deep snow, gunfire rang out in the distance.”[viii]
As a closing summation Juno’s own words may add to our understanding of the person. These come from the catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery’s 2003 exhibition Proof: Portraits from the Movement 1978-2003, Juno Gemes says:
I have eyes that see in a particular way. My eyes are informed by everything I have experienced, by all that I am. I saw powerful beauty, strength, resilience, ingenuity, and hope at a time where others mostly saw only despair, their own discomfort and shame. I saw what had been hidden, kept invisible. I tried to communicate from within one culture to another. It was sometimes a lonely place to be. I had many great teachers who taught me so much along the way. I understood how important it is never to forget what has been. For we are also — what we have lost.[ix]
I say again: “What can a woman do with a camera!” we now know the answer.
Congratulations Juno Gemes on your work in Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of The Movement for Indigenous Rights book and thank you for your solid contribution to making the often invisible visible and sharing these stories through the photographs you have made …
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Dr Doug Spowart
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[i] Gemes Juno, “Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of The Movement for Indigenous Rights” v Upwell Publishing. Perth 2024
[iii] “The Political and the Personal Process in Portraiture: Juno Gemes in Conversation,” Australian Aboriginal Studies (The Journal of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Straight Islander Studies) (2003).
“… this project keeps growing with wisdom, connection and
heart with every place (and places) that are present
and all who share in it.”
Sound artist Bree Marchbank.
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In March 2026 the Ours for the Making project was presented at two venues: the first, for Beechworth Biennale on the 7–9 of March and the second, at the Shepparton Arts Festival Hub 20–29 March. The following text is edited from project documents written by Tegan Nash Ollett with contributions from team members Bree Marchbank, Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart.
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Ours for the Making is an evolving installation activated through performance and community participation in clay leaf-making sessions. The project was presented as an audio/visual installation. In the final day of each showing was concluded with an improvised live performance. It explores our connection with each other, time, space and the environment. It also acknowledges place as having an active living presence. Featuring hundreds of handmade clay leaves, sound, and visual projections the work is intended to evoke temporal rhythms of growth, decay and renewal that mirror the life histories embedded in natural materials.
The Ours for the Making is a newly formed collective with each of the artists having a long-standing commitment to exploring place as an active, living presence. All four artists live and work in Benalla. Tegan Nash Ollett’s work in performance and community engagement foregrounds artistic practice as a connective, transformative process. Bree Marchbank’s sound works draw from environmental listening and experimental composition while Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart’s photographic, artists book and site-responsive practices examine how landscapes accumulate memory.
Separately, the four artists have received awards and featured in festivals and galleries across Australia, however, each share a strong interest and connection to regional contexts and communities through their work.
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THE CORE INSPIRATION FOR THE PROJECT
Over many years Tegan has work with communities in a process that engages participants in conversation while they worked by hand with potter’s clay to form leaf shapes. She found that people gathering together in this way shared their lived experiences, community’s histories and other personal reflections. Through these sessions the conversations were metaphorically embedded into the leaf objects they made. For her “making is a conduit for connection” and she believes “that through this process, knowledge is not transmitted hierarchically but shared laterally – through material, gesture, and collective experience”.
Following the leaf-making sessions Tegan fires the clay with wood in a fire-pit. Variations in the colour of the clay and occasional ‘blush’ marks and the maker’s fingerprints on the ceramic leaves evidence the story of their making.
Later the ceramic leaves are incorporated into the existing body of leaves created by the Artist (Tegan), allowing the installation’s evolution, with design considerations to reference a response to site. They are the muse for the artists in the development of the full audio-visual installation. The leaves are the centrepiece of the artwork.
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A communal clay leaf-making sessions taking place at The Old Priory
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VIDEO PROJECTION IMAGES+SOUND
Through initial team discussions, five themes/concepts arose as evocative and powerful connections for the leaves with the project. Each of the five themes evoked different expressions of being with/and in Nature. Cooper+Spowart drew from their lived experience traversing landscapes and walking. From this they created visual narratives – montages, for projection, as pathways through each of the five themes.
These five videos were then passed on to Bree who crafted her sound-works to respond to the visual montages. As Bree states she “approaches sound creation as ritual and collaboration, using improvisation to explore the life cycle of a leaf and our connection to place”.
Viewing of these video works in the installation is enhanced by the fragmentation of the image as it passes over the different suspended ‘veils’ they are, in themselves, individual performative elements, Acts, adding depth and filling the space with imagery.
Together the experience of each animated projection montage with the sound work is deeply layered and form individual elements – Acts, within the installation.
SEE: Bree, Victoria and Doug’s Artist Statements at the end of the Post for deeper insights on process and meaning
THE FIVE VIDEOS
Act of Fire
Act of Paralysis: Burnt Banksia
Act of Transformation: Decay and renewal
Act of Fragility: Sunrise
Act of Intimacy: Walking the path
THE INSTALLATION
Tegan’s draft install plan (Detail)
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In the installation a flow of clay leaves is both architectural and organic. Suspended above are rice-paper veils that catch image projection’s light, shadow, and act like memory skins. The rice paper has been intentionally torn and crumpled to add texture and visual light play. The grouping of leaves suggests concepts of ritual and offering, acknowledging its close relationship to nature, while the veils evoke garments, shrouds, and thresholds.
The sound and image projection animate the space slowly, asking viewers to linger rather than consume. The overall installation invites contemplation of time, care, and the residue of human gesture where gathering becomes an act of devotion and what remains has both material and memory.
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THE PERFORMANCE
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The one-off live performance is a unique opportunity for attendees to experience the Ours for the Making installation, highlighting the work’s themes through movement, sound and performance. The performance is improvised and features movement by Tegan. Bree activates her instrument’s and sings, at times harmonising with Tegan. In this live performance both respond, through movement and sound, to the sonic and visual rhythms of growth, decay and renewal.
SEE: Tegan’s Artist Statement at the end of the Post for deeper insights on process and meaning
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This YouTube video of the Beechworth Biennale performance by Cooper+Spowart is from a stationary camera position. Its run time is 40 minutes and is best viewed on a larger screen device.
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VICTORIA+DOUG’S REFLECTION ON THE PROJECT
In 2025 we connected with Tegan and her practice in performance and dance. Each month she leads a free ranging improvisation space for community engagement at Benalla Art Gallery called Fresh Juice. At one of these sessions Tegan witnessed Victoria’s exploration of the materiality of rice paper through her crumpling and ripping the sheet then moving it through the air and identified the performative nature of the act.
In a later conversation we learned about her many years of working with community engaging them in conversation while working with clay making leaf shapes. She mentioned that what she had seen at Fresh Juice had inspired her to discuss a collaborative project with us using rice paper, her ceramic leaves and a movement performance.
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Excited by the flow of concepts we set up an experimental installation with Tegan in our studio. We hung veils of rice paper from the ceiling over a large surface covered with her clay leaves. Studio lighting was arranged and an animated interpretation of an artists book by Victoria was projected over the scene. We saw potential for the work to be developed further. As Tegan had a strong connection with sound artist Bree Marchbank – she was invited to become the fourth member in this evolving collective project.
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With a successful application for an audio-visual, and sculptural installation engaging community to be developed for the Beechworth Biennale we began to work on the project – that was now entitled Ours for the Making.
From the start this work was developed though the team’s sensory response and reflexive exploration and this continued through to the final installation as a visual, spatial and sonic connection with the site.
After discussions with the Beechworth Biennale we were offered the theatre in The Old Priory. Built in the 1870s the large seating area, stage, dance floor all under an 8-metre ceiling – the site at first seemed challenging. However the installation issues were resolved, and the site was opened for public viewing on March 7 for the duration of the Festival, with a one-off performance taking place on the evening of the 9th of March.
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Through Tegan’s efforts we also received an offer of a presentation of the installation in The Hub at the Shepparton Art Festival. As a transformed vacant shop it was a totally different space and provided an exciting opportunity to reinterpret the installation and the concluding improvised performance.
In Conclusion
For us Ours for the Making has been both an exciting and challenging project. Working within this creative and innovative team was an enriching experience. We can see potential for this project to continue in other spaces – each time, a reimagining.
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Vicky+Doug
April 4, 2026.
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SOME DOCUMENTS OF THE SETTING UP OF THE 2 SPACES
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BEECHWORTH BIENNALE 7-8-9 March 2026 in THE OLD PRIORY (Site 11)
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SHEPPARTON ARTS FESTIVAL in the Festival HUB 20–29 March
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ARTISTS’ STATEMENTS
Tegan Nash Ollett in projection
TEGAN NASH OLLETT
While developing the ceramic leaf component of the installation, engages deeply with both the conceptual framework of the work and its physical, immersive elements, including space, projection, sound and structure. Nash-Ollett’s movement practice embodies both the visceral and experiential dimensions of the work’s central themes of life cycles and transformation, offering a physical articulation of the body’s encounter with these ideas.
Through improvisation, she responds intuitively to the spatial environment, sonic landscape, projected imagery, and the installation itself, activating the work and foregrounding the body’s relationship to place and its capacity to hold memory. This exploration unfolds through an emotive and physical engagement with life and its cyclical nature. Each cell of the body becomes implicated in this inquiry, as movement transports performer and audience through layered moments of embodiment.
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Bree Marchbank with gong
BREE MARCHBANK
Approaches sound creation as ritual and collaboration, using improvisation to explore the life cycle of a leaf and our connection to place. The sound developed through a devotional practice which included field recordings and attentive listening in community and nature. These recordings capture the living presence of place, with and without instrumentation, creating sonic textures, and relational gestures that invite deeper connection and shared experiences for the audience. The sound reflects repeating patterns that mirror organic processes of emergence and transformation.
For me music begins with deep listening, sitting, feeling and remembering with/and on country. Sounds, song, rhythm, movement, melody and their carriers always ask me to listen with all my essence first. Being invited to collaborate on this project, I was pulled to go and sit with country and listen in deep remembering in different locations that were connected to land, waters and sky of each of the festival sites. From there, sometimes I was invited in to sing and create in song and ritual and other times it was to go home and take in what I had remembered or had to relearn/unlearn and then act accordingly. It is devotional, it is ritual, but it is also humbling and honouring to be able to create music.
I create improvisations for and with my body, my blood, all my ancestors (known and remembering), mother earth, mother universe, all spirit who share this journey with me. This was how I began the listening journey for ‘Ours for the Making’. Then I went into deep listening in collaboration with us as a team, and all the places we brought together, further places upon where deep listening had happened, and with community who shared in story, place, creating together, connecting in and with country.
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Cooper+Spowart – Toowoomba Gothic Assisted Photo by John Elliott
VICTORIA COOPER + DOUG SPOWART
For these two artists collaboration is a dynamic space to test and challenge their individual creative practice and explore new and uncharted territory. They are informed by Charles Green’s book The Third Hand, where he proposes that collaboration creates a new entity full of potential and possibilities.
Over time they have recognised that their collaboration with Nature and the non-human has deepened and broadened their perceptions of Being-in-the-world. Their practice of Being is therefore fully engaged with Nature. Here, they loose themselves – corporeality evaporates and the physical space becomes a psychological state where poetic and aesthetic narratives emerge through deep reverie.
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IN A FUTURE BLOG POST
In the future we will consider a reflection statement for the project. Currently under development there is a video documentation of the project’s performance at the Shepparton Art Festival which will be made public when complete.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The artists acknowledge the support of Nina Machielse Hunt the BEECHWORTH BIENNALE team, and Gareth Hart the Executive Producer of the SHEPPARTON ART FESTIVAL, Eric Nash and the Benalla Art Gallery. Also families and friends across Victoria, Melbourne and Benalla, who have contributed to the installation through leaf-making sessions, discussions and sharings in the development of the ceramic leaf feature.
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Acknowledgement of Country
The artists also wish to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the various Country locations on which this art project has been made and presented. The artists also acknowledge and pay their respect to the ancestors and Elders – Past, Present and Emerging from these lands and any indigenous people who may attend or read about this presentation.
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The post header photograph is by Tegan Nash Ollett.
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The team photograph is by Gail Neumann.
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The portrait of Victoria + Doug was an assisted self portrait with John Elliott.
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All photographs are by Doug Spowart + Victoria Cooper unless otherwise credited.
A long-term underlying driver of our creative practice both individual and collaborative is linked to a philosophy of Being Present. Our work responds to a variety of conditions and influences including historical that relate to the contemporary experience of a place, space and time.
This bookwork and exhibition is the culmination of work started in December last year when we were offered a show by the Wangaratta Art Gallery Director Rachel Arndt in the Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre (WPAC). Very early in the project, Arndt selected the image of Doug walking along the Wooli Wooli River to be the featured image. This image holds a lot of meaning for us as it is emblematic of our long journey along many paths following new directions in our creative and personal life.
In the WPAC space we could only present framed work as a requirement for the organisation due to the complexity of presenting off the wall art in that public space. As our medium is artists books and photobooks with wall art to support the concept, we were then confronted with the dilemma of how to present an exhibition that was potentially an artists book. We forged ahead, confident that this would be resolved as we materially worked through the project.
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Ovens River Wangaratta
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Following on from recent work in the nearby Winton Wetlands (Mokoan) and our Desire Paths series of books, we began the project by exploring tracks within the local place of Wangaratta, the Ovens River and the Warby Ranges.
During this time we also returned to the place of the Wooli River walk in northern NSW where we further developed the conceptual and creative work.
At this time we identified and drew upon a connection to the exhibition space as a site that related to our practice that involves self-documentation as a performative exploration of each concept.
The book was now taking shape as a series of Eight Acts that brought together our physical and psychological documentation together with the concepts of performance. As Arndt highlights in the exhibition didactic our work is:
… not driven by the necessity to ‘arrive’ at a determined end point, but instead guided by a shared philosophy of ‘being present’ – to meander and be aware of the possibilities in each step. Attuned to the sounds of birds, the texture or shape of a tree, an abstract form or shadow, or a poetic thought, they will stop and take time to observe and document these moments, each pause a metaphorical and visual conversation between time, place and being-in-the-world.
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Being Present: 8 Acts installation
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Presented as a series of eight ‘Acts’, Cooper and Spowart’s new body of work explores the psychological and corporeal insights of their walking practice. Their performative actions are captured through the making and reading of a book, with each framed work presenting one page turned and exposed, while another is hidden below. Just as one leg steps forward, the other remains behind in shadow. The ground, or their mise-en-scene, bringing situational significance.
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4 images of Angophora Grove Walk showing different aspects of the book
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We designed the book so that each ‘Act’ offers an engaging haptic reading experience through unfolding the pages. In the exhibition space we were unable to show the book, therefore to give viewers an opportunity to see it in its entirety we made videos performing each ‘Act’ folio. Visitors to the exhibition can access these high definition videos via QR codes on the didactic panel next to each frame. We will also be presenting the book at specified times during the exhibition’s 3 month duration.
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Being Present: Eight Acts book and clamshell
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HERE ARE THE EIGHT ACTS
ACT ONE – The fourth path
ACT 1 – The fourth path – Wooli Wooli River
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT TWO – Angophora Grove Walk
ACT 2 Angophora Grove Walk, Yuraygir National Park
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT THREE – Walking the Fenceline
ACT 3 Walking the fenceline – Sunrise Track, Warby Ranges
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT FOUR – Walking Through the Thickness …
ACT 4 Walking through the thickness of sound – Ovens River, Wangaratta
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT FIVE – In the Presence of a Tree
ACT 5 In the presence of a tree – Lake Catani, Mount Buffalo National Park
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT SIX – The Meeting Circle
ACT 6 The meeting circle – Ovens River, Wangaratta
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT SEVEN – Portal, The Great South-West Walk
ACT 7 Portal – The Great South-West Walk, Glenelg River
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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ACT EIGHT – Taking Flight, Boroka Lookout
ACT 8 Taking flight – Boroka Lookout, Gariwerd National Park
TO VIEW A VIDEO PERFORMANCE of this ACT “Click” HERE
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THE ARTISTS’ EPILOGUE TO THE BEING PRESENT BOOK
Throughout the development of this project, we have been informed by, and acted on, insights arising from both the physical: walking and corporeal contemplation; and the psychological: metaphorical and poetic connections with our surroundings.
Being Present is a philosophy that resonates throughout our creative careers and everyday life – underpinning our past, and as we navigate new paths.
The performance and creation of the eight ACTS has set the stage for future visual books to share, through the haptics of reading and visual metaphors, a deep connection with narratives of place.
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THE MAKING OF THE BOOK
This body of work was first exhibited as a book in frames in Wangaratta Art Gallery’s exhibition space at the Performing Arts Centre in August to December 2024.
The book was resolved, printed and bound in our Bridge Street Studio in Benalla.
Being Present: Eight Acts is printed on an Epson printer with pigment inks on Epson Velvet Fine Art Paper and Zerkall printmaking papers and bound in Stonehenge covers, with Kozo Kawairi interleaved papers and waxed linen thread.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We wish to thank Rachel Arndt, Director of the Wangaratta Art Gallery for the opportunity for us to conceptualise, develop and create a new body of work that relates to the continuing theme in our work – Being Present.
We wish to thank Dr Felicity Rea for the access given to her family retreat at Wooli where we worked on this project. We also wish to acknowledge her continuing commentary and support of our work.
Thanks also to Cassandra Pollack for her knowledge and companionship along the Ovens River walk.
Thanks to Remy at She’s Arty in Benalla for the framing of the exhibition.
We also acknowledge the First Nations as the traditional custodians of the Country on which we have travelled through and worked. We respect their deep and enduring connection to their lands and waterways and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.
We honour and respect their ancestors, Elders past, present and emerging and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
The Winton Wetlands in north-eastern Victoria, also once known as Lake Mokoan, has been through many changes from farming to the building then decommissioning of a dam. Now this visually haunting and beautiful place is undergoing a new phase of regeneration – reviving the natural state of living wetland environment.
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Dr Lisa Farnsworth, Winton Wetlands Restoration Manager, has been working with local artists to form a group that finds inspiration for their art in the Wetlands. She comments:
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The Winton Wetlands Creatives Group is driven by a passion for the natural beauty and cultural richness of the Winton Wetlands Reserve. Through various art mediums and engagement opportunities, the group aims to advocate for the Winton Wetlands restoration project and for the ongoing protection and appreciation of its cultural and ecological assets. I’m genuinely excited to see how art, culture and ecology can align to create great outcomes for the health of our local people and natural landscapes.
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Artists Victoria Cooper, Maggie Hollins + Doug Spowart
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In the spirit of Lisa’s vision we formed a collaboration with fellow Benalla artist Maggie Hollins to create a visual response to the Winton Wetlands inspired by its layered human and natural history and contemporary renewal. In our work we have associated this altered landscape with the concept of a palimpsest – a manuscript that was reused by writing new text over the previous words.
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The Palimpsest features again in the exhibition where the collaboration between us as artists can be experienced as a layered narrative, where multiple stories and experiences intertwine to form a cohesive whole.
3 Invitations for the exhibition in BAINZ GALLERY in Wangaratta
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SOME VIEWS OF THE EXHIBITION
PALIMPSEST Exhibition Bainz Gallery
PALIMPSEST Exhibition Bainz Gallery
Maggie Hollins’ “Aeon”
Maggie Hollins’ ‘Recognition of the Past”, “Shelter” &”The Dead Stags”
Winter – a collaborative work about witnessing
Victoria Cooper’s A Work in Progress artists book
Doug Spowart’s “Once was…” and “Story Trees” view right
Maggie Hollins’ “Spirit of the Past”
Maggie Hollins’ “Harmony”
PALIMPSEST Exhibition Bainz Gallery
Maggie Hollins’ “The Circle”
Doug Spowart’s “Once was…” and “Story Trees” view centre
Doug Spowart’s “Story Trees” (detail)
PALIMPSEST Exhibition Bainz Gallery
Maggie+Victoria+Doug planning the project
Maggie Hollins’ “Drifing on a Current”
The Lunette – a collaborative work about witnessing by Cooper+Spowart
Vicky+Doug in Palimpsest exhibition
Winton Wetlands logo
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SEE A FLY-THROUGH VIDEO OF THE EXHIBITION
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A COMMENTARY ON THE EXHIBITION …
Victoria Cooper, Maggie Hollins and Doug Spowart have collaborated to produce and display a wonderful and diverse visual exhibition. They have sought to associate the altered Winton Wetlands landscape with the concept of a palimpsest. In doing so they are contributing to discussion of different, yet overlapping, stories of the wetlands.
Cooper and Spowart have been involved in the arts as practitioners, teachers and commentators for a lengthy time, including having residencies at Bundanon. Hollins has qualifications in ceramics, leads art workshops and enjoys playing fiddle. Unsurprisingly therefore, each and every artwork displayed is of a high standard.
There are unique, handmade textural and sculptural artworks by Hollins that use a diverse variety of materials – including found small branches, knotted bark, dyed cotton thread, solar and rust dyed cotton fabric, metal rings, and found grasses. They are accompanied by postcard sized images of the same artworks “displayed” on site in the wetlands. Those images were a team effort – Hollins operated the camera, Cooper was location scout and camera assistant, and Spowart did the lighting and Director of Photography duties.
There are larger standalone photographic prints and collaborative diptychs by Cooper & Spowart conveying stories of witnessing, magnificent 3 metre wide concertina photobooks by Spowart displayed folded out and attached to the wall, plus artist books and poetry by Cooper.
It all comes together splendidly, successfully conveying the messages the artists want visitors to hear.
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BRIAN ROPEReviewer for and member of the Canberra Critics Circle
Pamela Kleeman-Passi speaks at Ncholas Walton-Healey’s exhibition SALT FRAMES
Salt Frames exhibition
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A SELECTION OF IMAGES
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‘SPOOR’ Nicholas Walton-Healey from the exhibition SALT FRAMES
‘WHISPER’ by Nicholas Walton-Healey from the exhibition SALT FRAMES
‘SKIN’ Nicholas Walton-Healey from the exhibition SALT FRAMES
‘TOUNGE’ Nicholas Walton-Healey from the exhibition SALT FRAMES
‘CARESS’ Nicholas Walton-Healey from the exhibition SALT FRAMES
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A COMMENTARY ON THE BODY OF WORK by Victoria Cooper
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watch the water long enough and you’ll see a fish jump … *
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Salt Frames review
Nicholas is a poet…
Salt Frames is simultaneously a visual and textual poem. On the surface it is an exhibition of light and colour abstractions from time spent on the Nightcliff Foreshore, Darwin. But this work also has deeper layers and meaning that are evoked through the supporting words and symbols within the images, as Walton-Healey discloses: “Sea salt aids the healing of wounds (including those beneath the surface of the skin).”
Walton-Healey points out that more broadly Australians have an affinity to the coast. The sea and the coast become places of personal meditation and for some physical and psychological healing. His seascapes are not the usual pictorial or grand panorama – instead he shares visual metaphors; those moments of revelation and contemplation that can hold many different meanings to the viewer.
The text blocks with the images are, for me, not titles but words that operate as codes to other ways of being and thinking. If we cast our minds to memories of reverie by the sea, perhaps these words articulate our collective human experience of being at the coast.
On connecting with Walton-Healey’s opening speech, the meaning embedded in the words and the images of layered light, colour and stilled moments was underpinned by a deeply moving human story. Through the visual poetry of this exhibition the artist has humbly shared vulnerability, tenderness and deep thinking. In this openness of vision he also created space for the viewer to spend time to consider and connect with our own stories and memories.
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Dr Victoria Cooper
* A teaching by Larrakia Warrior Robert E. Lewis to Nicholas Walton-Healey
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THE OPENING SPEECH BY PAMELA KLEEMANN-PASSI
Pamela Kleeman-Passi speaks
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Acknowledgement to Country
We respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land, the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) peoples of the Kulin Nation. We extend gratitude to all Elders past and present and their enduring connection to land, sea and community.
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Welcome to the Salt Frames exhibition …
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My friendship with Nick grew out of a deeply personal connection of loss and renewal, and a mutual passion for experiencing life through the lens of creativity. And now we have Darwin in common! Our shared stories meandered and overlapped during my month there mid-last year for my own exhibition. I actually didn’t know that much about Darwin until that visit, and I returned to Melbourne with a deep fondness for the culture, the landscape and the communities. I thank Nick for facilitating a visit to the Tiwi Islands to spend a moment of precious, rejuvenating time at the Tarntipi Bush Camp on Bathurst Island.
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So what you see within these salt frames of the Nightcliff foreshore is Nick’s immersion in and introspection on the blessings and cruelties of life, and the healing power of the water and the land. The evocative single word titles express an array of feelings and experiences and the images are imbued with opposites:
He’s combined the poetic and the photographic, with an Impressionist painterly quality to many of the works. Nightcliff is a very special place for Nick… but it also has a fascinating history and I quote from Tess Lea’s personal/historical book, Darwin: “Even the dumping grounds of Nightcliff, where unwanted machinery and detritus from WWII were tipped over a cliff, have merged into the rocks below, no longer distinguishable, just deformed lumps of rust and chalk.” The colour of rusted metal is very evident within some of the images – how over time, it’s merged with the landscape shaped by the power of the sea.
In this time of climate fragility and significant settler land and sea degradation, I feel compelled to refer to ecological grief and the healing power of the land and the water because the land and sea are absolutely fundamental to a community’s overall mental health. Nick’s images are testament to that healing power.
For Nick…
On the edge, at the edge… of love and loss and longing,
And remembering and wanting to forget
And letting go but holding on…
Wedged between land and water, pushing and pulling
Lapping across a surface that belies a depth so utterly profound and unfathomable
A photographic imprint, focused and blurred
Where light inscribes water, water inscribes land
And language and form mutate and merge, rippling and surging in a constant soundtrack
That violently crashes and gently caresses in waves and heartbeats
Eroding, erasing, healing and repairing
The run-off leaving traces that ebb and flow
As life and love and loss and longing ebb and flow…
And it’s sink or swim or scramble to a fragile stability on solid ground and remain upright
Robert Lewis, Larrakia Warrior, speaks at the opening of SALT FRAMES
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Nic from Vic
Hi my name is Robbie Lewis, I’m a Larrakia Man. Born and bred on Larrakia land in Darwin.
2013, The Eye See Workshop, working with young Indigenous people living on a local community, in the Darwin region, where I met a young man trying to make understanding of life, this is when I first met a young spirited man, Nicholas Walton-Healey!!
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A student photographer trying to find he’s way around the community. At first, I saw another white man taking photos of Indigenous people. But now, 10 years later, I see a great man showing the rest of the world through he’s eyes the beautiful things he sees through a camera.
To talk about
Communications – to talk, to say, to hear, to listen, to answer, to reply, also to understand and help.
Management – to be a leader, a teacher, to educate, to be in charge, to manage and help.
Worker – to do a job, to earn a wage, to keep things moving forward, to do work and to help where there is no other.
Thank you everyone for making it out tonight. I don’t have the time to personally thank each one of you, here. But I’m really proud of, and humbled by, the diversity of the groups represented in this room. Friends. Family. Collaborators. Colleges. Mentors. And Muses. You’ve all contributed in some important way to the journey I’ve been on, with my photography.
Pam and Rob, I’m especially grateful for the friendship I share with each of you, and for your very kind and thoughtful words tonight.
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What you’re looking-at in the salt frames photographs, is The Timor Sea. And more people go missing each year in The Timor Sea, than they do in any other sea throughout the world.
I can certainly say that I’ve felt the pull. The allure of its rhythm, and hypnotic calamity.
It made perfect sense to me, when I read that statement in a book that Pam recently lent to me. Over the past twelve months, Pam has gifted me some important inspiration – we met at the ANAT Spectra Live event in Melbourne, and our paths crossed again in The Northern Territory last year. They converged at Tactile Arts in Darwin, during Sweet Dreams and Gut Reactions, the title of Pam’s exhibition, which got me thinking…
It’s probably an understatement, for those of you who know me, to say I’m inspired by the viscerality of art. I’ve always understood the role of the artist to entail a questioning of accepted definitions of the normal and possible. And that the moral and aesthetic responsibility of the photographer is to make the invisible, visible and the familiar, strange…
Photography is a highly intuitive process for me. I make the pictures first, and make-sense of them, second. So, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing, walking up and down the Nightcliff foreshore at all hours of day and night, last year.
I was actually stopped one evening by an elderly couple, who said ‘ahh, you’re a photographer!?’ I looked-at them, bemused, because I had a camera in my hand, and responded with, ‘yeah!’ But then the lady then came closer, and touched me on the arm. She looked into my eyes and said, ‘Well, that’s good, because we’ve seen you out here every night this week and thought you were homeless.’
The remark startled me because, while I was always on the lookout for crocs, I actually felt pretty safe in Darwin last year, which was when I made the majority of these photographs. Even if I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor of Rob’s kitchen.
I have a really special connection with Rob, who is like a big brother, to me; one of my mentors, teachers, guides and best mates, over the past ten years.
I first met Rob on an Indigenous community known and referred to in Darwin as Knuckey’s. This was back in 2013, when I first travelled-up to Darwin with one of my university lectures – Mark Galer – for The Eye See Workshop. Although our initial encounters were brief, I remember being struck by the enormity of Rob’s heart; the fact that he actually, genuinely cared for the people living on this, and the other communities we visited.
At the end of that workshop, I was invited back to Darwin by Rob’s boss-at-the-time. From this point, I entered into what became a five-year-plus partnership. This lead me back out onto those communities, and ultimately, to almost all of the so-called town camps in and around the Greater Darwin Region.
For all this time, I was like Rob’s little shadow. I followed him everywhere, and especially to the programs he ran with the men and family groups from these communities. Through these means, I built my own friendships and connections. But that’s another story, another project…
The Salt Frames are more overly focussed on my personal connection with Rob. Our friendship grew partly through the bond I developed with his late mother, Robyn, who I learnt to recognise and identify as an authentically Darwin person; Robyn’s mother (Rob’s maternal grandmother), was born at Lamaroo Beach, before being stolen as a child, and was eventually adopted by Juma Fejo.
The Fejos are one of the original eight family groups recognised as the Traditional Custodians of the Greater Darwin Region.
So Rob’s Larrakia, and the Larrakia are also known as The Salt Water People. The Salt Frames show Larrakia country, which includes Nightcliff, the place where Rob and I spent a lot our time when we weren’t working on the communities together.
Watch the water long enough and you’ll see a fish jump. That’s what Rob used to say to me. And I found it really frustrating at first, because I couldn’t see any fish. But over time, I realised that, rather than asking me to simply look-at the water, Rob was actually asking me to look into it. In this way, he transformed my ability to ‘see.’
But he wasn’t the only person I went to Nightcliff beach with. Before and after re-locating from Melbourne to Darwin, Nightcliff was the place that my late fiancé most liked to visit. She loved watching the sunsets. And unwinding and connecting on the beach. Over the years, we made a lot of love along this coastline. Beside the Timor Sea. And sure enough, it was not too far up from one of these spots that we returned on the afternoon she received her cancer diagnosis.
Shit happens. We deal with it. And then we move-on. That’s also one of Rob’s sayings; but it was the teaching I found most difficult to comprehend. Dealing with it, was what I really trying to do in the five and half months I spent in The Territory last year, walking around the beach like a homeless person.
Making these photographs was one way I felt I could make-good on my promise to do something with my photography, while at the same-time maintaining the connection that my finance and I shared with the families and communities we worked with. In August last year, Rob accompanied my mother and I over to the Tiwi Islands, for her Pukamani ceremony. The overwhelming majority of the photographs in this collection were made in the weeks that followed this event.
So whichever way you look at them, the Salt Frames show profound and enduring connection. But they also acknowledge the inescapably transient nature of being. You don’t get to beauty without pain, and love is very hard to name, without seeing the full-face of loss. The process of curating and assembling this show, and gathering you all in this room tonight, is part of an attempt to move forward. ..
The Artists Book Brisbane Event, known as ABBE held their 4th event, a Print Culture Fiesta, on November 26 at the Queensland College of Art’s Web Centre. We were there not so much in our physical form, but rather as a table presenting our latest artists book and photobook publications.
ABBE events were initiated at the Griffith Centre for Creative Arts Research in 2015. This year’s ABBE was expanded to embrace all aspects of print culture. Via a selection process around 30 small publishers, artists and designers attended the event to share their creative works to an audience of peers, collectors and those who just love to see and handle art in the print form.
Helen Cole in her library
While we were unable to attend, well-known artists book identity Helen Cole presented our books at the fair. Fellow artists book maker David Symons also was successful in his application for a table and shared the exhibition space next to us.
Other participants included: Alethea Richter, Ana Estrada, Annique Goldenberg, Bad Teeth Comics, Bronwyn Rees, cobalt editions, Cooper+Spowart, David Symons, Ebony Willmott, Geoff Burns, Glenda Chaplyn, Grey Hand Press, Helen Sanderson, IMPRESS, Ivy Minniecon, Jennifer Long, Kanako Enokid, Louis Lim, Maikki Toivanen, Mat Adams Comics, Matt Newkirk, Michael Phillips, Noshyacking Press, Peter Breen, Rachel Dun, Samantha-Jane Windred, silverwattle bookfoundry, Sue Poggioli, Swing Moon and the NightLadder collective.
Contacts and friends who participated in, or attended ABBE commented that it was a great opportunity to see all the artists works, meet up with friends and network with peers. We were also thrilled to be able to show our work as most of these books were only recently made this year.
abbe2022 Logo
SOME IMAGES OF THE EVENT courtesy of Helen Cole and David Symons
Helen Cole at the COOPER+SPOWART table PHOTO: David Symons
Tim Mosely + Helen Sanderson PHOTO Helen Cole
Sue Poggioli + Gael Phillips PHOTO Helen Cole
At ABBE PHOTO Helen Cole
At ABBE PHOTO Helen Cole
Ana Paula Estrada PHOTO Helen Cole
David Symons at ABBE PHOTO Helen Cole
Helen Cole setting up our table PHOTO: David Symons
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COOPER+SPOWART – CRAP Books
Victoria Cooper – Desire Paths
Victoria Cooper ‘Visual Field Notes’
Doug Spowart ‘Walking Urban Ground’
Cooper+Spowart ‘Desire Path – Stepping of the concrete” books
Cooper+Spowart ‘Desire Paths’ books
OUR WORKS PRESENTED @ ABBE
Our presentation consisted mainly of 5 recently resolved and made by us. The main books are two from a continuing series relating to concepts surrounding ‘desire paths’ and follow on from an artists book made by Victoria for the Melbourne Art Book Fair in 2019. To see more information about this book CLICK HERE
The two new books Desire Paths: Navigating the path and Desire Paths: Stepping off the concrete take on an autobiographical response to our lives over recent years.
To see more information about Desire Paths: Navigating the pathCLICK HERE
To see more information about Desire Paths: Stepping off the concreteCLICK HERE
As a result of relocation to Benalla in north east Victoria last year we have been inspired by our new location to create two books – one, a field report by Victoria, dealing with the natural environment and the other by Doug about walking and the suburban architectural space.
To see more information about Victoria’s Visual Field Notes book CLICK HERE
To see more information about Doug’s Walking Urban Ground book CLICK HERE
The 5th book is another in the continuing Artist Survey series for the Centre for Regional Arts Practice. This latest book relates to concerns and preparations for the regional artist to sell their home. At ABBE a selection of the final copies of the earlier 22 editions of these C.R.A.P. books. To see more information about this book CLICK HERE
We would like to acknowledge and thank Helen Cole and David Symons for their support in presenting our work at ABBE and also to the QCA team that made this opportunity happen …
Looking forward to the next ABBE … We’ll be there …
Graham Burstow – Self Portrait – Viewer & the Viewed show at QCP 2006
Recently I have been working through my extensive archive, and Graham Burstow‘s name kept surfacing. I found a piece of correspondence from nearly 20 years ago when I was asked by the Australian Honours Secretariat to support a nomination for Graham for an Australia Day Honour. At the time I was the chair of the AIPP Education Sub-committee and had previously provided letters of support for photography related nominations.
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Even though 20 years has elapsed since being written, the words still hold true. We should recognise that Graham continued and expanded his connection with the great love of his life – photography.
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I am honoured to be able to present this commentary on our friend – Graham Burstow OAM
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LETTER DATED:August 3, 2003
Australian Honours Secretariat, Government House, Canberra ACT 2600
Subject: Graham Burstow
Dear Secretariat,
I have known Graham Burstow since the late 1960’s. He has been a significant inspiration due to his dedication to the art of image-making, but also his support of many structures that shape photography in this country. While I make mention of this man’s influence on my life, his works and work have touched and inspired thousands of Australian and international photographers for nearly 50 years.
Graham Burstow’s main sphere of interest is in the camera club movement. He has held numerous positions within the Australian Photographic Society including national President, Chairman of the Print Division, keynote speaker and mentor. Since 1959 he has held positions within the Toowoomba Photographic Society (one of the oldest such groups in Australia). Burstow has been Chairman of no fewer than 6 national and international exhibitions of salon photography.
In his hometown of Toowoomba he has each year coordinated several national art photography awards including the McGregor Prize for Photography at the University of Southern Queensland, and the Heritage Photographic Award at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery since 1977. In my opinion Graham Burstow has a hand in, and a hand to offer, for anything photographic from presenting lectures or judging awards for students at the Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE where I work, or assisting community groups including senior citizens groups and Lifeline.
Burstow’s work appears regularly in magazines and publications including his self-published book “Touch Me”. In 1984 I curated a substantial survey of his work at Imagery Gallery in Brisbane. His work has been shown in salon exhibitions world-wide and in major institutions like the Queensland Art Gallery.
Graham Burstow has received significant honours for his photographic work and his service to photography including the following: Associateship and EFIAP(service) of the International Federation of Photographic Art, Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society, Associateship of the Photographic Society of America and a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Australian Photographic Society.
In a review of his book “Touch Me” I commented that:
Burstow’s work is about sharing his vision with the world. It represents a lifetime of photographic exploration of the art. Burstow’s work is not just about camera club pictorialism but also aspects of the human condition and the humour of everyday situations. This book is not intended as a catalogue for purchase, it is rather a communique, the photographer reaching out with the world in his photographs inviting the viewer to touch the experience portrayed.
Diversity of style and subject is apparent in Burstow’s journey in photography. It seems as if he had walked alongside Max Dupain at the beach, been with Wolfgang Sievers at the building site, shared an impromptu moment with Henri Cartier-Bresson, a portrait session with Arnold Newman, some personal introspective moments with Nan Goldin, and an adventure with Frank Hurley.
Australian photography would be greatly diminished if it were not for the contribution of this generous and modest man – I have great pleasure in supporting his nomination for the Order of Australia.
Yours faithfully,
Doug Spowart M.Photog, FAIPP, Hon.FAIPP Chair of the AIPP Education Sub-committee
A SELECTED COLLAGE OF IMAGES FROM GRAHAM’S LIFE
Click on the image to enlarge the view and see the full caption
Burstow image ‘The Critic’ in APSCON Catalogue PHOTOGRAFICS 1973
Graham Burstow with APS Legend Grace Lock and Ruby Spowart c1981 PHOTO Doug Spowart
Graham Burstow with other judges-The Warana National Exhibition of Photography 1982 PHOTO Doug Spowart
Burstow catalogue for ‘Within Reach’ at Imagery Gallery 1982
Burstow on Social Documentary-Image journal-Sept 85
APS President Graham Burstow Image journal-Jan 84
Burstow, Niel Perkins, Maris Rusis, Ian Poole, Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart (torso) at Noosa PHOTO Zigi Georges
Burstow exhibitions at Imagery Gallery
Burstow invitation for his exhibition ‘Sometimes a Light’ at TRAG 2002
Graham Burstow in his exhibition ‘Sometimes a Light’ at TRAG 2002 PHOTO Doug Spowart
A selfie with Graham in the ‘ICONS’ group exhibition at Cobb & Co Museum 2014 – PHOTO Bev Lacey
Graham in the ‘ICONS’ group exhibition at Cobb & Co Museum 2014 – PHOTO Doug Spowart
Graham with TAFE students at World Photobook Day 2013 PHOTO Doug Spowart
Graham Burstow + his book ‘Closer’ December 2020 PHOTO Doug Spowart
SOME WORDS FROM GRAHAM …
ACL presentation media at Cobb & Co Museum Toowoomba 2021 PHOTO Doug Spowart
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For an insight into how he felt about his life in photography, an event in 2021 at the Cobb & Co Museum recorded by the Chronicle Newspaper (paywall) might provide an answer. Graham was being awarded a Life Membership of the Australian Cultural Library (ACL) by the director Steve Towson. In a video interview he was to comment that he had been photographing for 73 years. He also added:
When you look at the things you can do to keep your mind occupied and increase the length of your life, photography is nearly always near the top of the list.
It keeps your mind busy and even when you are not photographing you are probably thinking about something you want to photograph.
I think it’s worked in my case … I enjoy it, met a lot of wonderful people, it’s been great to get to go to a lot of interesting places… *
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ONE FINAL STORY FROM GRAHAM …
In my collection I have a Graham Burstow photograph entitled No 2 The Day Ahead. For me, at this time it is a poignant image …
Standing in the gallery before David FAIRBURN’s Drawn together-Double portraits V.H & J.E.L NO5
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The Pandemic and its significant social disruption has reduced the ability for visitors to enter the physical gallery. However the gallery has reached out through Internet mediated platforms to present online formatted exhibitions to not only to those in lockdown just down the street but also to those geographically distanced from the gallery.
This take-up of online exhibitions has been significant that now it seems that every gallery, as well as entrepreneurial artist, have a virtual gallery. Specialist online providers include Matterport, Ortelia Curator and Exhibbit.
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Some of these online programs can not only give the gallery a record of virtual attendances and where those visitors came from through their ‘hits’ stats, they may even be able to track the way visitors navigate through the online exhibition space. Bravo to the galleries who have stepped up to provide art interested people a 21st century solution to the COVID-19 challenge to provide a connection with commercial or institutional gallery spaces.
Earlier in lockdown we visited the 2020 JADA quite a few times via their excellent online gallery. On these virtual visits we were presented with an online experience of being ‘in’ the space with enhancements that enabled us to zoom into full size images of the work and through a ‘click’ button, the ability to read the title of the work, artist’s name and other artwork details. While we were online visiting it was interesting to consider that others from all over the country, or even the world, could be simultaneously in the same virtual gallery space.
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The Matterport virtual gallery – JADA 2020
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SOME OF THE 2020 JADA FACTS
The JADA exhibition presents a snapshot of the contemporary practice of the drawing artform. The 2020 awards presented 56 works from a record total entry of 659. Pre-selection was carried out by Peter Wood (CEO, Arts Northern Rivers), Brett Adlington (Director, Lismore Regional Gallery, Michael Zavros (artist and 2002 JADA winner), and Heather Brown (President, Friends of Grafton Gallery). The judge of the final Award was Peter McKay, curatorial manager Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery — Gallery of Modern Art. A catalogue essay was written by Andrew Frost.
Teo TRELOAR – This is impermanence
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Teo Treloar’s work titled This is Impermanence (2019) was announced as the winner and Sarah Tomasetti’s work titled Kailash North Face IV (2019) and, Noel McKenna’s work titled Hamlet (2020) were recommended for purchase for the JADA Collection.
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DRAWING ON THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ARTWORKS
The JADA exhibition reveals a myriad of techniques, media and surfaces. The view of the artwork in the physical space of the gallery is a sensory experience that provides an opportunity to encounter the actual art object and the potential for much closer viewing that can reveal so much more about the work.
For that reason my physical experience in viewing the actual work gave me a deeper experience of the media used and the way it contributed to the artist’s communiqué. Now this may sound as if I’m proposing that the physical beats the virtual but that is not my point. The online space is critical to the broad distribution of the artworks in any exhibition. In many ways the viewing of a pixel presented view of an artwork is not dissimilar to how we experience art in the printed form in a magazine or book.
The online exhibition can convey extended information about the art and the exhibition through downloadable catalogues that cover artist’s statements, the judge’s comments and an essay. What I’m highlighting is that the online exhibition plays an important role in connecting viewers with art that is inaccessible for whatever reason. Seeing the physical object in the gallery is an elevated experience. So it is important to note that JADA is a travelling exhibition and that the ability to physically view the works will be afforded thousands of visitors during its 2 year showing.
It is important to applaud the Grafton Regional Gallery for their initiative in organising, hosting the physical show, coordinating the online exhibition and the touring component. For without JADA’s significant biennial review of the discipline in Australia the drawing community of practice could be fragmented and isolated.
My discussions in this Blog post has been in response to seeing the drawing artworks in the gallery space and connect personally with the detail of the mark and its surface. So to share the richness of the close-up physical experience I approached the Gallery to provide me with access to the catalogue and the information it contains. I have now linked this information with close-up images of selected works from photographs* made while I viewed the exhibition. Through this Blog post I’m attempting to extend the virtual viewer’s experience – it may represent a future enhancement to the online gallery.
Enjoy …
Doug Spowart
*Note some of the photographs contain minor reflections of lighting and other frames from the gallery space.
Our www.wotwedid.com blog reached the milestone of 1000,000 views last week. It has had 56,000 visitors who have had the opportunity to view 380 posts and read around 250K words and see the hundreds of photographs that we have made to compliment the stories.
Our wotwedid Blog was started nine years ago as an opportunity to connect with our friends and creative communities via social media. The topic cloud for the wotwedid Blog includes ARTISTS’ BOOKS, PHOTBOOKS, CAMERA OBSCURA, EXHIBITIONS, MEETING PEOPLE, THE ART AND PRACTICE OF PHOTOGRAPHY, REGIONAL ARTS, CYANOTYPES, PLACE PROJECTS and POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH.
Topic cloud wotwedid
Usually the content that we post is generated by us and includes the written commentaries, the photographs and illustrations – it can be quite a lengthy time consuming task to get a blog up.
While many posts relate to what we do, have done or will be doing, the Blog represents a chronology of activity in our art practice, our lives and issues that we are concerned about. Due to the contemporary space that the arts and artists occupy today much activity and many events go unnoticed and unrecorded. So a significant driver is to provide a space for commentary on what is happening outside of the popularist ‘art bubble’.
Early this year we were excited to learn that the State Library of Queensland had nominated wotwedid.com for inclusion in the Pandora Archive managed by the National Library of Australia, ‘to ensure the collection and long-term preservation of online publications relating to Australia and Australians. This objective contributes to the Library’s statutory function to comprehensively collect Australia’s documentary heritage.’
Over the years we have found that many views, screen dumps and downloads of resources we make available take place anonymously without comment or feedback. Then again, we understand that this is the same for most online resources. Despite this we find that as we travel and meet friends, fellow artists, academics and curators many say how much they appreciate and enjoy the content that we generate and post.
So, a BIG Thank You to all have visited … And we look forward to your return to help take www.wotwedid.com to the next milestone – 200,000K views.
D+V with masks
Vicky+Doug
PORTRAIT PHOTO: Susan Belperio
Here are some images of people met, events documented and our own art activities over recent years …
2017 NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair
Wim de Vos presenting at ABBE Artists Book Conference 2017 at the Queensland College of Art
Siganto Seminar and Artists’ Book Fair – June 20+21, 2015
ABBE Artists Book Fair 2015 l-r Christene Drewe+Helen Cole+Diedrie Brollo
All you can eat – Nocturne Bundaberg
Farm produce store: Nocturne Miles
Hilary Wardhough + Mel Anderson PHOTO: Supplied
Martin Parr and Doug Spowart reviewing Australian and New Zealand photobooks at the State Library of Victoria for consideration to be included in the Tate submission. January 2018.
Some Antipodean Photobooks from the Tate project PHOTOCOLLAGE: Doug Spowart
Peter Lyssiotis’ book “What the moon let me see’
2015 – EXHIBITED: ‘Books by Artists’, The Webb Gallery as part of the Artists Book Brisbane Event
Joe Ruckli’s exhibition ‘Lightning without flash’ at QCA
Teun van der Heidjen workshop @ PSC
Justine Ellis & Dan Rule – Perimeter Books
Maris Rusis & Doug at his Foto Frenzy exhibition
Juno Gemes at Fireworks Gallery Brisbane
Ian Poole at Foto Frenzy
Peter Lyssiotis in his studio
Helen Frajman of M.33 at the Volume Art Book Fair
Andrew Chapman
Lou Gilbert
Gerrit Fokkema & Libby Jeffery
Sonya Payes
Harvey Benge at Photobook New Zealand 2016
Meg Hewitt at Volume Art Book Fair
Des Cowley+Cartier-Bresson’s Book_1936
BIFB Photobook Panelist: David Wadelton PHOTO: Doug Spowart
BIFB Photobook Panelist: Patrick Pound PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Doug introduces the BIFB Photobook panel PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
Anita Totha – Remote Photobooks NZ
With BIFB Creative Director Fiona Sweet
Rephotography project for Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery: Don Featherstone ‘Golden Tree’ 1959 – Spowart+Cooper Corner of Kitchener & Herries Streets 1996
‘Under the southern sun’ cyanotype exhibition at The Maud Street Photo Gallery PHOTO: Gail Newmann
Gail Neumann hanging the ‘Under the southern sun’ cyanotype exhibition at The Maud Street Photo Gallery
‘Under the southern sun’ installation at The Maud Street Photo Gallery
Beata Batorowicz + Doug judging the Somerset Art Award 2019 Photo: Victoria Cooper
Tilley Wood artist PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Doug presenting a workshop at New England Art Gallery & Museum Armidale
Martin Parr looking at ANZ photobooks – Vienna Photobook Festival 2017 PHOTO Lachlan Blair
Doug sorting through book boxes
’10 starfish that are an invasive species with 8 bones of a Tasmanian wallaby’ by Victoria Cooper
EXPO88 Nocturne Zebra Photo by Y. Regami (a.k.a. Doug Spowart)
British Library buys ‘Australian Banquet, January 25/ 26, 1788’
At The Unconformity, Queenstown 2018
At The Unconformity, Queenstown 2018
Meeting with Marc Pricop at The Unconformity, Queenstown 2018
Meeting with Raymond Arnold at The Unconformity, Queenstown 2018
Beginning the porthole blackout of the camera obscura on the Spirit of Tasmania ferry
Spirit of Tasmania ferry Camera obscura: a 3-5 metre wave crashes against our porthole
Imagery Gallery – my mother and business partner Ruby and I
Victoria Cooper, Ian Strange, Helen Cole, Damien Eckersley
Frank Corley circa 1994 Photo: Doug Spowart
A portrait of Wim de Vos at Studio West End. Photo: Doug Spowart
Wim de Vos’ sketchbook of the Mackay Artspace’ Focus on Artists Books conference
Adele in the New West End Studio
Thomas Oliver portrait shoot
At the Monash Gallery of Art at the opening of the cyanotype exhibition ‘In Anna’s Garden’
With Elysha Rei completing our collaborative C.R.A.P. Artists Survey book
A page from Doug’s flipbook Narcissus meets himself on the way to Bunadanon
Bundanon residency Writer’s Cottage dichotomy: a projection
Bundanon residency Vicky’s a page from the ‘River’ book
A page from the cyanotype artists book ‘Tidal’ a finalist in the Libris Artists Book Awards
Pinhole portrait of Ian Poole 1993
Ian Poole, Glen, Ruby, Asai, Ben and Doug at the opening of Floating
Participants in the video by Doug Spowart – Photography, 5 years from now
Team Foto Frenzy – an Impossible Project 10×8 Polaroid by Doug Spowart – RHS Ian photographs Doug
Doug Spowart and Ian Poole with the poster for Shot from down under
Vicky and the BLUE NOTEBOOK YEARBOOK
Caren Florance at the ABBE Conference Photo: Doug Spowart from ABBE Artists Book Conference 2017
Brad Freeman at the ABBE Conference Photo: Doug Spowart from ABBE Artists Book Conference 2017
Doug with his cyanotype book at the Skopelos Greece workshop Photo Victoria Cooper
Steph Bolt with some of her full sheet prints at the Skopelos Workshop Photo Doug Spowart
Regina Maria Anzenberger and Doug Spowart at the Vienna Photobook Festival PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Natalia Baluta (Russian Self-Pub) at the Vienna Photobook Festival PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Gerry Badger in review with us at the Vienna Photobook Festival PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Yiny And comment in a lucture by Doug Spowart
Doug with his cyanotype transparency at the Skopelos Greece workshop
Michael Aird, Juno Jemes and Joanne Driessens @ Fireworks Gallery PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
“Up Close” Artist Talk chaired by Doug Spowart PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
The CarCamera on the Barkly Tableands during the transcontinental crossing
A CarCamera obscura image on the Barkly Tableands during the transcontinental crossing
The Sentinel, Mt Buffalo a zoneplate pinhole by Doug Spowart
Doug’s Graflex 4×5 fitted with a zone plate
Vicky’s shortbread biscuit tin 6x17cm panorama roll film
A bikkie tin pinhole of Myall Park Botanic Gardens – from the exhibition Natural Encounter
Pinhole 4×5 Chrome film exposed in a film box by Victoria Cooper
Lost City zoneplate by Doug Spowart
Silvi Glattauer at Baldessin Press Studio PHOTO: Doug Spowart
William Kelly with Nicola Stairmand at Baldessin Press Studio SLV Creative Fellowship Residency announcement event Spetember 27, 2015 PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Sandy Barrie and the Art Union journal featuring a Henry Fox Talbot print Photo: Doug Spowart
World Photobook Day Forum at Maud Street Photo Gallery PHOTO: Daniel Groneberg
Libby Jeffery MomentoPro after a long day at Volume Art Book Fair Sydney
Bella Capezio making Insta Photobooks for APPA at the Volume Art Book Fair
John Ogden Cyclops Press at Volume Artbook Fair Sydney PHOTO: Doug Spowart
A David Williams portrait of Doug at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale
Adele Outteridge + Wim de Vos – Photo from ABBE Artists Book Conference 2015 by Doug Spowart
Doug Spowart reading a book at the SLQ
Doug Spowart with the La Trobe journal that features one of his papers on photobooks PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
Out at night shooting images for the Nocturne Muswellbrook project
Nocturne Musswellbrook exhibition opening with the Gallery team
Nocturne Musswellbrook exhibition opening
Photobook Melbourne: Peter Lyssiotis looking at an Aperture Books
Des Cowley talks the ‘OTHER’ Photobook Forum at the Photobook Melbourne event
The judging team for the Australian Photobook of the Year Award PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Vicky and Doug photographing for the Toowoomba Art Society’s ‘Waterways project’
Early in 2019 Vicky and I received an email from Monica Oppen and Caren Florance inviting our contribution to a report commenting on news and updates on book arts activity in the Antipodes that they were preparing for the Codex Foundation‘s new journal The Codex Papers. They mentioned that they were asking for those involved with projects, conferences, workshops, collections and awards to send through their comments and plans so the local scene could be collated into the report.
Monica and Caren added that, Your commitment to the photo books and also to documenting events for the past years (or is it decades now?!) has lead us to decide that we must ask you what you see as the trends and key events of the past couple of years. Any feedback (your personal view) on the state of the book arts in Australia at the moment would also be of interest.
We were particularly excited to have been invited to contribute and over the days following the request we collaborated on a document that outlined our view of the scene. Photo documents that we had made were reviewed and prepared and forwarded, along with our text to Monica and Caren. The task of collating and blending the individual responses into a single report was completed and forwarded to the Codex Foundation.
Early this year the report was published and we received a contributor’s copy. We were impressed with the journal and the many interesting commentaries on the book arts from around the world. It was interesting to see the complete report and to read the individual contributor’s comments.
Published below is our text and some of the photographs we contributed in response to Monica and Caren’s invitation.
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Notes on the Antipodean book arts in the Antipodes for Caren + Monica
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Noreen Grahame in the exhibition Lessons in History Vol. II – Democracy 2012
In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the world of the artists’ book in Australia was an exciting place. In Brisbane Noreen Grahame, through her Grahame Gallery, Numero Uno Publications, Editions and the Centre of the Artists’ Book championed the Australian artists’ book discipline. Grahame efforts were directed towards artists’ book exhibitions which started in 1991, art book fairs the first of which was held in 1994 and special invitation themed artists’ book exhibitions featuring clique of prominent national book makers.
2010 Focus on Artists’ Book (FOAB) Conference Artspace Mackay
2016 Libris Awards: Australian Artists’ Book Prize Artspace Mackay
2010 Libris Awards: Australian Artists’ Book Prize Artspace Mackay
David Dellafiora presenting a workshop at the 2010 Focus on Artists’ Book Conference Artspace Mackay
Caren Florance presenting a workshop at the 2010 FOAB
Artspace Mackay under the directorship of Robert Heather hosted the first of 5 Focus on Artists’ Book (FOAB) Conferences in 2004. Over the years FOAB brought to Australia some of the world’s noteworthy practitioners and commentators on the discipline including Marshall Weber, Keith A Smith and Scott McCarney and juxtaposed them with local key practitioners. For the next 6 years those interested in artists’ books gathered to participate in lectures, workshops, fairs and a solid community of practice developed. In 2006 Artspace Mackay added the Libris Awards: The Australian Artists’ Book Prize that, with a few breaks, continues to be the premier curated artists’ book exhibition and award in Australia.
Noosa 08 Artists’ Book exhibition – Noosa Regional Gallery
Queensland also had 10 years of artists’ book exhibitions and 5 years of conferences from 1999-2008 at Noosa Regional Art Gallery. In many ways Queensland was the place to be if you were into artists’ books.
Throughout the 1990s and until fairly recent times State Libraries and the National Library of Australia actively collected and built significant artists’ book collections. These included many forms of the artists’ book including: private press publications, significant book works by recognised international and Australian practitioners, books as object/sculpture, zines and the emergent photobook.
Helen Douglas presenting her Siganto Foundation Artists’ Book Lecture March 2017
Keith Smith + Scott McCarney presenting Siganto Foundation Artists’ Book Lecture 2012
Siganto Seminar and Artists’ Book Fair – June 20+21, 2015
State Library of Queensland – FREESTYLE BOOKS EXHIBITION curated by Helen Cole
State Library of Queensland-Siganto Foundation White Gloves Event L>R Christene Drewe, Helen Cole holding a book by G W Bot and Janette Garrad holding a book by Bea Maddock
Helen Cole, Michael Waddel and Clyde McGill at Siganto Seminar and Artists’ Book Fair – June 20+21, 2015
Noreen Grahame with Amir Brito Cadôr Siganto lecturer at Siganto Artists’ Book Fair – June 20+21, 2015
Lyn Ashby presenting Siganto Foundation Artists’ Book Lecture March 2017
Now around the country major libraries are feeling the push by managers to move access to the library’s resources online thus the importance of the physical object and the tactile connection with items such as artists’ books is now not considered part of the service that the institution needs to provide. For example, the State Library of Queensland’s Australian Library of Art, which houses one of the largest artists’ book collections in the country, is now without a dedicated librarian. Research fellowships and seminars that were once administered by the Library and supported the Siganto Foundation are no longer available. Information and advice about the collection and other exhibitions or group viewings of artists’ books from their extensive collection have been significantly affected.
A K Milroy + Brad Freeman presenting at ABBE Artists Book Conference July 6-9 2017 at the Queensland College of Art
Dr Tim Mosely at the ABBE Artists Book Conference July 6-9 2017 at the Queensland College of Art
Ulrike Stoltz & Uta Schneider presenting ABBE Artists Book Conference July 6-9 2017 at the Queensland College of Art
Wim de Vos presenting at ABBE Artists Book Conference 2017 at the Queensland College of Art
Robert Heather at ABBE Artists Book Conference Forum July 6-9 2017 at the Queensland College of Art
EXHIBITED: Books by Artists at the Webb Gallery – ABBE Artists Book Conference July 6-9 2017
Brad Freeman @ ABBE Artists Book Conference July 16, 17 & 18 2015 at the Queensland College of Art
ABBE Artists Book Fair 2015-Marian Crawford and Sarah Bodman
Noreen Grahame in the exhibition “… & So” at the Queensland College of Art Library -Photo from ABBE Artists Book Conference 2017
In recent years two Artists Book Brisbane Events coordinated by Dr Tim Mosely at Griffith University has facilitated a significant connection between the American and European scenes with guest speakers like Brad Freeman (Columbia University – Journal of Artists Books), Sarah Bodman (Centre for Fine Print Research – The University of the West of England), Ulrike Stoltz and Uta Schneider (USUS). The conferences also have included a place for discussion and review of the discipline by academics and emergent artist practitioners from Masters and Doctoral programs. These two ABBE conferences have provided a platform for academic discourse.
The artists’ book medium has been principally the realm of the printmaker as their artform easily enabled the production of printed multiples. Digital technologies, new double-sided inkjet papers as well as print-on-demand technologies have enabled the emergence of a range of new self-publishers – particularly photographers.
In 2011 I completed my PhD the title of which was Self-publishing in the digital age: the hybrid photobook. From my experiences in the artists’ book field as a practitioner and commentator and my lifelong activities in photography I saw a future for the photobook which could be informed by the freedoms and the possibilities for the presentation of narratives. While some aspects of this prophecy have been the case with some photographers, particularly those involved in academic study, the main thrust for the contemporary photobook has been towards the collaboration with graphic designers. These books take on various design and structure enhancements including special bindings, foldouts, mixed papers, page sizes, inclusions and loose components that can, at times, dilute the potential power of the simple photographic narrative sequence. The contemporary photobook has developed into its own discipline and through the universal communication possibilities of social media, conferences and awards a new tribe has emerged quite separate from and unaffected by the artists’ book community.
NGV Melbourne Art Book Fair 2017
Over the last 5 years the National Gallery of Victoria has presented the Melbourne Art Book Fair. In keeping with the art book fair worldwide movement participants man tables selling their publications. These can range from Institutional/gallery catalogues, trade art publications and monographs, artists’ books, photobooks and zines. The umbrella-like term and the spectacle of the ‘Art Book Fair’ as an event to witness and participate in has captured the individual disciplines and united the various tribes into one, not so homogeneous – community.
Melbourne Art Book Fair 2019
Melbourne Art Book Fair 2019
A quick review of the 2019 Melbourne Art Book Fair’s 86 table-holders there were only a handful of artists’ book-makers, perhaps a similar number of photobook publishers and a large contingent of zinesters and self-published magazines. The bulk of the tables were held by book distributors, bookshops, arts organisations, educational institutions and art galleries. The discipline of artists’ books was not significantly represented in this space. Was that due to the National Gallery of Victoria’s selection of table-holders or was it to do with artists’ book practitioners not considering the event as a relevant opportunity to show and sell their works?
Ultimately the question is – what is the status of the artists’ book in Australia at this time?My impression is that one of artists’ books key strengths was its closeness to the printmaking discipline and the cohesive bond of makers, critics and commentators, educators, journals, collectors and patrons. As many of these are connected to the tertiary academic environment and collecting libraries, both of which are fighting for their relevance in a changing education and library world, could it be considered that this is a defining moment in the history and the future of the artists’ book in this country?
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