Posts Tagged ‘Roger Skinner’
2025 MULLINS CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE
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2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Priz
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2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize
Muswellbrook Regional Art Centre 14 August – 11 October 2025
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The Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize seeks artist entities that challenge the viewer via the illustration of a concept rather than being merely illustrative or representational.
The work must be primarily photographic but not to the exclusion of mixed media and three dimensional objects.
The Australian Photographic Society’s Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize is a national $30,000 acquisitive prize that seeks to find Australia’s best conceptual photographic works. Finalists of the prize are exhibited annually at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre with the prize-winning work joining the Muswellbrook Shire Art Collection, and a collection of contemporary photographic works acquired through the Muswellbrook Photographic Award (1987 – 2014). Means of work presentation are unrestricted, inviting photographers to illustrate the intent of their works through a myriad of mediums.
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Antares Wells Assistant Curator MCA PHOTO: liya Cohen Headshots
ABOUT THE ADJUDICATOR (From the APS Instagram)
This year’s sole adjudicator is Antares Wells, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Antares is a curator and writer with a specialisation in photography. Previously, she was Curator at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, and Curatorial Assistant in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
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THE 30 FINALISTS (Selected from 366 entries)
Images supplied by the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize. “Click” on the image to enlarge entry and to see maker and title.
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Antares Wells announces the Prize-cropped
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THE ADJUDICATOR’S ADDRESS AND PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENT
Good afternoon everyone, and thank you all for coming. It’s wonderful to see so many people here celebrating contemporary photography. My name is Antares Wells and I am Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. It’s an honour to have been invited by the Australian Photographic Society to judge the 2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize and I am thrilled to be here with you today. I’d like to acknowledge the Wonnarua people as the traditional custodians of the lands on which we are gathering tonight and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
This year’s Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize received hundreds of entries from across the country and I am delighted to have selected 30 finalists for this exhibition. The work presented here spans the breadth of contemporary photographic practice in Australia.
Artists Justine Roche, Nicholas Hubicki, Claire Paul and Isabella Capezio engage thoughtfully with the natural environment and its relationship to photography, presenting work that reflects a deep consideration of materials. Works by Carolyn Craig, Shea Kirk and David Rosetzky critically consider the body, desire and the self. Artists Mungo Howard, Angus Brown, Lisa Stonham and Annabelle McEwen mine the relationships between photography and other media, such as painting and sculpture, encouraging us to think critically about what a photograph is.
Works by Skye Wagner, Claudia Nicholson, Darron Davies and Callan Skimin reframe existing found and archival imagery, creating new image worlds in the process that harness the photograph’s associative power. Artists Jeremy Drape, Jessie Turner and Julie Purdie experiment with perception and the capacity of the lens to frame a world.
Works by Dylan Marriott, George Angelovski, Kathy Mackey, and Tamara Voninski experiment with colour and form, while artists Izabela Pluta and Yvette Hamilton consider sites of photographic history and practice through formally ambitious works. Finally, Miho Watanabe, Hilary Wardhaugh, Ali Tahayori, Lilah Benetti, and Minami Ivory explore memory, trauma, loss, and possible futures, in quietly affecting and powerful ways.
For those of you drawn to processes of technical experimentation, you are in for a treat. We have artists who are working in new ways with historical processes, such as salt prints, wet collodion and opalotypes; we have artists inventing new processes, such as ‘chemography’; and we have artists working critically with new technologies such as 3D printing, moulding, and Artificial Intelligence.
As you can imagine, with this group of finalists it was incredibly difficult to identify a winner, and I thank Elissa, Brian and Roger for their patience over the past 48 hours!
Johanna Ng – a woman wearing a choker is walking in a crowd, 2024
I am delighted to announce that the winner of the 2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize is Johanna Ng, for her work a woman wearing a choker is walking in a crowd (2024). Drawn from her broader body of work every asian in sex and the city, Johanna’s work utilises screenshots of Asian extras in the TV show, often glimpsed in the background. Johanna writes in her statement: I “photographed the extras in new compositions” and then “fed these compositions through Google’s image-to-text and then text-to-image AI engines. Ultimately, an image of an Asian woman becomes ‘a woman’ and the text ‘a woman’ conjures the image of a white one.”
Johanna’s work is visually compelling and turns on its ability to make you stop, look, and then look again. There’s a dimensionality to it best experienced in person, which gives form to questions of visibility, erasure, and the biases structuring the image and text generation systems that are increasingly shaping how we see, think and behave. Congratulations, Johanna!
I am also pleased to award two works as Highly Commended:
Mungo Howard – Studio Window, 2025
Congratulations to Mungo Howard for his work Studio Window (2025), a beautiful work hovering somewhere between painting, sculpture and photography, turning on the power of introspection.
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Miho Watanabe – Awareness of Between-ness A Day After My Father’s Departure – Self-Portrait in His Room on His Chair, 2025
Congratulations to Miho Watanabe for his work Awareness of Betweenness: A Day after My Father’s Departure – Self-Portrait in His Room on His Chair (2025), a quietly affecting meditation on memory, grief and the passage of time.
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Congratulations to all of the finalists, and thank you again to Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre and the Australian Photographic Society for having me as this year’s judge.
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The Adjudicator Antares Wells with the winning entry
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SOME DOCUMENTATION OF THE EXHIBITION OPENING EVENT
“Click” on the image to enlarge and see the caption.
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SPONSORS OF THE MCPP
The 2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize is made possible by the Australian Photographic Society in partnership with the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, and with the support of Bengalla Mining Company, MACH Energy, Malabar Coal, AGL Hunter, and Australian Photography Magazine.
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SEE OUR BLOG POST FOR THE
2023 MULLINS CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE
“Click” the link HERE
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POSTSCRIPT: THE WINNER JOHANNA NG VISITS EXHIBITION
Johanna Ng+Roger Skinner with Max Watters’ statue PHOTO: Andrew
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Mullins poster
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Adjudicator’s address ©Antares Wells
All photographs of the MCPP exhibition at the Muswellbrook Regional Art Centre are ©Doug Spowart
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CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE: The Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize – Muswellbrook Art Centre
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Recently we were part of the judging team for the 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize (MCPP) which is coordinated by the Australian Photographic Society. The Award is acquisitive and is offered nationally with a value of $25,000. The Mullins Prize seeks to find Australia’s best conceptual photographic works where the means of work presentation are unrestricted, inviting photographers to illustrate the intent of their works through a myriad of mediums. The finalists are exhibited and judged at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre.
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JUDGE ELOISE MAREE’s PRIZE ANNOUNCEMENT SPEECH
Eloise Maree announces the winner
It’s been a pleasure and a privilege judging the 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize here at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, on Wanaruah Land. I’ve really enjoyed observing the ways in which the works dialogue with one another, as well as the dialogue they bring about in their observers.
I am pleased to announce that CHRIS BOWES is the WINNER of the 2023 MCPP with his work SUN KISSED #1–4. The fact that Chris Bowes has two works within this finalists exhibition is a testament, I feel, to the strength of his artistry.
Sun Kissed #1-4 is concurrently simple – coloured film imprinted with light as the sun rises and sets – and complex – non-representational landscapes, at once simulacras and originals, motion and stasis, photography and meteorology. Congratulations on beautifully distilling and expanding the definition of landscape photography.
Chris Bowes is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Naarm (Melbourne), on the unceded lands of the Kulin nation. Bowes is a first time MCPP finalist and receives the 2023 MCPP $25,000 cash Prize.
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Chris Bowes Sunkissed #1–4
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ARTISTS STATEMENT: “Sun Kissed” is a series of experimental photographs created using a hand-made camera that, rather than capturing a representational image, instead captures the colour of light. They are presented in pairs, each pair containing an imprint of the light at sunrise and sunset over the course of several days. As such, the work’s aim is to reduce landscape photography to its most basic form, imbuing photographic film with an impression of the sun rather than capturing it washing over the environment.
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Roger Skinner with the Adjudicators
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COMMENTS ON THE ADJUDICATION BY JUDGE LEN METCALF
The 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize is an incredible and important exhibition. It shines as the leading art photography prize, and as such is a showcase of what photography can be. That is the point of it isn’t it? To question what photography is, to push the boundaries into new areas, to test assumptions and explore the photographic visual medium beyond its established boundaries. The resulting exhibition does this exceptionally well.
This visually stimulating, emotionally charged and intellectually challenging exhibition is the culmination of a long judiciary process. Firstly 450 entries are digitally catalogued and the adjudicators, Eloise Maree, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart and myself (Len Metcalf) carefully start examining each entry. We carefully considered each of the artworks, the multiple images that accompanied many of the works, sizes, the titles, and the artists statements. From here we all picked a selection to be a finalist and to be exhibited. Interestingly, there was only one overlapping artwork, a testament to the diversity in background and aesthetics of the panel, but most importantly to the diversity and quality of the entries.
Thirty artworks were bought together for the exhibition at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, an interesting and stimulating mix of work. As we wandered around the exhibition the quality and the breadth was overwhelming. As was the daunting task of choosing only one winner. I joked that we could randomly choose a winner and argue how deserving it would be.
Adjudicators deliberating
The adjudication panel, over the better part of a day, wandered around and discussed every artwork in depth. Examining in detail, considering the artwork in front of us as it was presented. It was mentally exhausting and incredibly rewarding.
When we came together, reflecting on all of those conversations, there had been one artwork where all the judges glowed as we hovered around it, the conversation was stimulating and illuminating inspired by the artwork. A quick check with all the judges and the decision was unanimous.
The judges agreed to each choose their own to add four additional highly commended awards.
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ABOUT THE HIGHLY COMMENDED AWARDS
Judith Nangala Crispin’s A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light
Judith Nangala Crispin A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light
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Doug Spowart comments on Judith Nagala Crispin’s Highly Commended work
The very name of this prize ‘Conceptual Photography’ demanded of me to seek out works that went beyond the reality of normal visual captures and that dealt with and idea transferred to a photographic outcome. Though Crispin’s work is firmly embedded in a range of photography and, perhaps even pre-photography techniques what excites me is the caring and poetic narratives she creates that connect the death of the animal recorded and its spiritual resurrection.
ARTISTS STATEMENT: This is part of a series of afterlife portraits of birds and animals, ascending between earth and outer space. I place cadavers on emulsion, creating images with a Lumachrome glass printing sun printing, cliché-verre and chemigram. Decomposition chemistry creates colour and detail. Each print is exposed 30–50 hours in natural light. This work draws on my experience of tracing my family’s Aboriginal ancestry. I am trying to honour the lives of animal and birds with whom we share this planet.
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Arrayah Loynd’s I don’t always understand/selectively mute (diptych)
Arrayah Loynd I don’t always understand/selectively mute (diptych)
Victoria Cooper comments on Arrayah Loynd’s work
This work is hard to walk past but equally hard to look at. The artist’s statement and title resonates with the images. Loynd embedded concepts of identity, crisis and trauma in the layers of this deeply confronting work.
ARTISTS STATEMENT: I don’t feel like I belong in my body, it feels awkward and uncomfortable like an ill fitting suit. I live in a constant state of confusion…of others, of myself. I am not who they say I am, I am not who you think I am. I am no one and nothing, I am everyone and everything, So come and find me, but only in the small moments when I want to be found. I make no promise that I will be there. (neurodivergence/trauma)
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Melanie Cobram’s The Colony Reclaims the Land
Eloise Maree comments on Melanie Cobram’s The Colony Reclaims the Land
Within this work, Melanie’s photographically ‘captured’ landscapes are terrorised and territorialised by a colony of termites (I’d be curious to know if the termites were a native or introduced species). I really enjoy the way the termites’ interventions extend beyond the photographic negatives to the matboard, just as this photoseries extends discussions on migration, citizenship and belonging beyond the usual frames of reference. Congratulations on creating such a thought-provoking work, Melanie.
ARTISTS STATEMENT: The Colony Reclaims the Land is a series of 35mm negatives depicting the Australian landscape, intervened by a colony of termites. The negatives were fed into a termite mound and crossed over by the colony as it travelled assiduously across the nest. The work plays with the dialogue of living on colonised land by inviting a native colony to reclaim its own image. The termites’ subtle topographical drawings reconcile landscape and language, eliciting conversations about migration, citizenship and belonging.
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Jess Leonard’s I knew at the Time
Len Metcalf’s comments on Jess Leonard’s I knew at the Time
‘I knew at the Time’, by Jess Leonard is fascinating as it is one of the few artworks in the exhibition that adheres to a more traditional approach to the photographic medium. Or is it? The artwork and the narrative asks the viewer so many questions. Ones that remain unanswered by the work. We are left with discussions and questions. As the artists says in their artists statement, ‘themes of women, the body and place, memory and mystery… The story you walk away with is yours to believe.’
ARTISTS STATEMENT: Perhaps uncanny and slightly disorientating this work explores themes of women, the body and place, memory and mystery with only a fragment of the narrative presented before the viewer. The story you walk away with is yours to believe.
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THE FINALISTS
Name Artwork Title
Alex Walker Manual Exposure
Anna Carey Crystal Mystery, 2022
Annabelle McEwen Self Scan B (photogrammetry)
Arrayah Loynd I don’t always understand/selectively mute (diptych)
Ben Kelly Dimension
Chris Bowes Dip/Dunk #1
Chris Bowes Sun Kissed
Chris Byrnes Beyond the Photogram Chasing Alison No 1 Dawn Light
Damian Dillon Bourgeois Cha Cha #7
Dave Carswell Flocculation #2
Holly Schulte Swell (37)
Jacinta Giles For the Birds?
Jenny Pollak Free Fall
Jess Leonard I Knew At The Time
Judith Nangala Crispin A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light
Katrina Crook Untitled#1 (In Silence)
Kelly Marie Slater Landshapes: Pass between Needles
Kenneth Lambert Burden of Proof (Data Portrait of Magdalene)
Kim Percy Sway
Marcus O’Donnell (De)Composition – a dark ecology
Matthew Schiavello Under the Sea
Melanie Cobham The Colony Reclaims the Land
Nicholas Hubicki Vitichiton (the end of the forests)
Nikky Morgan-Smith Index
Peter Rossi Unchopping A Tree
Regina Piroska I Followed A Worm (accordian book)
Stephen Blanch The Acrobat and the Flea (Flood Loss, Lismore 2022)
Tebani Slade Of me in the landscape
Wouter Van de Voorde Uncontrolled
Yianni Maggacis The Good Room XII
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Chris Bowes 2017 PHOTO: Doug Spowart
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CHRIS BOWES’ COMMENTS ON RECEIVING THE PRIZE
Published on his social media after the Prize’s announcement …
Chris Bowes’ @quisbie
Well, this was a pleasant surprise.
I’ve been making art for over a decade, and yesterday was probably the highlight of my career so far. Ever since I made my first conceptual project Sweat nine years ago, I’ve been wanting to create a process that captured some of those ideas using ‘landscape’ photography. When I first picked up a camera 15 odd years ago, my main interest was shooting landscapes. This focus transitioned to conceptual photography while I studied, and it completely changed the way I viewed and used the medium. What I’m most excited about is that this prize money will go back into the photographic community by supporting my new venture @kindredcameras.
It feels really validating to win a competition like this, but I feel conflicted about competitions because while I’ve come out on top, there are lots of other amazing artists who were just as deserving of the win. I want to acknowledge the significant time and money that artists put into being a part of these things with the unlikely hopes that they’ll win the big prize. It’s often a huge financial burden and an emotional rollercoaster. The work from all the other artists in the show is incredible, and I hope you go and have a look at their practices
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ABOUT THE ADJUDICATORS
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Eloise Maree PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Eloise Maree
Eloise is an artist and arts worker privileged to be living and working on and with Gundungurra and Wiradjuri land (Blue Mountains and Bathurst, New South Wales).
Eloise is a photographic artist utilising wet plate photographic processes. Eloise is interested in the relationships between people and place, in the history, and historical processes, of photography and in ‘creative histories’. Eloise’s camera-original wet plate photographs are both historical (hand sensitised using a silver nitrate solution, for example) and contemporary (shot using modern lenses, for example, and or lighting). This locates Eloise’s photographic art in the past as well as the present, and this colocation enables Eloise’s revisionings of histories and archives.
Eloise is experienced by way of Craig Tuffin as well as by way of Ellie Young of Gold Street Studios, a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) (Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney) and a Master of Museum Studies (the University of Sydney).
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Len Metcalf PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Len Metcalf
Len’s journey towards photographic education began long ago, with the gift of his first camera as a young boy in the Blue Mountains, and his first teaching experience in a local Scout troupe at fifteen years old. After graduating from High School, Len took a job as an outdoor educator in Kangaroo Valley to support himself through a Visual Arts degree, majoring in Photography.
This was the beginning of a lifelong quest to combine his passions for adventure, education and photography. While studying Fine Art, Len had the opportunity to learn from fine teachers such as George Schwartz, Eardly Lancaster Julie Brown-Rrap and Lynn Roberts Goodwin at the City Art Institute (now Faculty of Fine Arts at NSW University).
He graduated with straight distinctions and received the coveted award for ‘Most Outstanding Advanced Colour Photographer’. Turning down two corporate photography sponsorship offers, Len instead pursued a career in education and outdoor adventure. Photography became his unbridled passion and his escape from work. During his 30-year career in the education sector Len worked with numerous schools and businesses as an experiential educator, facilitating learning outcomes through experiences in the outdoors.
In the tertiary education sector Len worked at the University of Technology, Sydney in the Faculty of Adult Education as course coordinator and lecturer in the Bachelor of Teaching program. Later, he took on a role in the TAFE system as a vocational trainer designing, developing, coordinating and running some of the best industry courses in the world for over twenty years.
After 30 years as a facilitator, educator and trainer, Len was ready to pursue a new direction. He completed a Graduate Diploma in Art Education at Sydney University and a Masters Degree in Adult Education at the University of Technology, Sydney. In 2000 Len founded Len’s School. Since then he has been teaching, mentoring and guiding photographers in some of the most spectacular landscapes in Australia, from arid deserts and windswept coasts to his backyard in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.
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Cooper+Spowart PHOTO:Spowart/Elliott
Cooper+Spowart
Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart are visual artists with an extensive practice as individuals and in collaboration. Both have completed individual PhD studies in photography, photobooks and artists’ books. Cooper and Spowart have been finalists in many photographic art awards and been the recipients of major prizes.
They have also judged photography, artists book and photobook awards, and have lectured nationally and in New Zealand. Their work including prints, artists’ books and photobooks has been acquired by regional and state galleries and also by the prominent art book collections of State Libraries, the National Library of Australia and the British Library.
In social media they contribute to the Instagram accounts @wotwesaw (Victoria) @woteyesaw (Doug) and their practice commentary blog www.wotwedid.com. They are the founders of the Centre for Regional Arts Practice, The Cyanotype in Australia and New Zealand and the Antipodean Photobook (also Blogs and Facebook groups).
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Doug and Barbara Mullins PHOTO: Trevor Bower
ABOUT THE AWARD’S BENEFACTORS: DOUG AND BARBARA MULLINS
In 2009, Barbara Mullins provided the Australian Photographic Society with a bequest in memory of her husband, the late Doug Mullins, President of the Society 1964-1966. This bequest was part of the proceeds from the sale of Mullins Gallery, the former headquarters of the South Australian Photographic Federation of which Doug was Patron.
At that time the bequest was intended to support the regular publication of an APS book of members’ work. In 2011 the first edition of APS Gallery was published. In 2012, the APS celebrated its 50th anniversary and a second book was published. No further books have been created and the balance of the bequest has since grown through interest earned.
Seeking to ensure the long-term future of its new Australian Conceptual Photography Prize introduced in 2019, the Society approached the Mullins family with a proposal that would satisfy the intent of honouring both Doug’s and Barbara’s significant contributions to the APS. There was much synergy in the proposal with the style of Doug’s exhibition photography in the Prize, and in Doug and Barbara’s generous support of the arts and the Art Gallery of SA.
In early December 2019, approval was received to apply the balance of the bequest funds to the Prize. The Society has, therefore, retitled the prize as the Mullins Conceptual Photography prize (MCPP) and it will be a permanent reminder of Barbara and Doug Mullins.
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The coordinators of the MCPP are Brian Rope and Roger Skinner – Thank you for your enthusiasm, energy and hard work to help make the Prize happen.
Roger Skinner and Max PHOTO: Doug Spowart
THE MULLINS CONCEPTUAL PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE gratefully acknowledges all their supporters and sponsors:
• Bengalla Mining Company www.newhopegroup.com.au
• Ilford www.instagram.com/ilfordphoto/
• MACH Energy www.machenergyaustralia.com.au
• Malabar www.malabarresources.com.au
• Australian Photography magazine www.australianphotography.com
Thank you to Eliose Maree and Len Metcalf for their texts. Some texts edited from the APS and MRAC Releases and SM posts
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©2023 All photos by Doug Spowart
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ROGER SKINNER: A Life in Light – the book
Roger Skinner and the blog author at the APSCON book launch
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Roger Skinner is a prolific image maker, artist, photobook maker and poet. Skinner has won many of Australia art photography awards yet he also pursued an interest in the camera club movement. Celebrating 50 years of his photography Roger has compiled a weighty book divided into the subject themes that he chose to explore. Earlier this year he spoke with me about his self-published folly – 500 books, over 300 pages of colour and black and white photographs, every page a picture with consideration for the double page pairings. He also asked me to write a foreword to the book. In September Roger visited the printers in Canberra, picked up the proofs and brought them around to our house-sit in Queanbeyan with his print coordinator and brother Ian. What a moment to witness as the table before us was covered with the uncut pages of the book … A few suggestions and some corrections were made – then the presses rolled.
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Ian Skinner, Vicky, Roger and Doug looking at proofs
For many years Roger was a director of the ‘Contemporary Group’ in Australian Photographic Society. Although he resigned his membership of the Society many years ago he was invited back to the APSCON convention at Tweed Heads to launch the book and make a presentation about self-publishing. As the proverbial ‘prodigal son’ Roger gave the 100 or so attendees the back story to his life in photography from the first photograph to those made relatively recently. He alluded to the complexities of self-publishing and the anxiety associated with committing to a personally funded book project in the many thousands of dollars. However his presentation was not intended to dissuade others from considering making their own books, but rather the realities of such an undertaking.
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Roger Skinner presenting his book story @ APSON Conference
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Towards the end of Roger’s lecture he asked me to come forward and officially launch the book. As I stood before this APSCON audience I was reminded of my first experience as a presenter in 1977 as a young budding photographer. Then, as now, the audience contained some of my mentors and heroes. These included Bill Smit gave me my first experience of a properly setup darkroom and printing techniques. And Graham Burstow, the Toowoomba photographer who inspired me in the late 1960s, and who is still as lively as ever with a new show just opened at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery. Like Roger my APS membership has now lapsed – I first joined in 1967 – perhaps I digress.
I spoke of Roger’s A Life in Light book as being a brave venture. Of how all photographers have libraries and that they learn principally from the books of others. I told them about the great variety of Roger’s work: was he a pictorialist? A photodocumentist? An abstractionist or a poet with a lens…? It gave me great pleasure to launch the book and I encouraged those present to support Roger, and their interest in photography to buy a book that very day … many did.
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Doug Spowart launches Roger Skinner’s ‘A Life in Light’ PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
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If you have an interest in seeing a collection of inspirational work created over 50 years then A Life in Light may be an ideal book to have in your library – to purchase:
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Book $40.00 each
Postage and packing in Australia $13.40
Email address is rojpix@ipstarmail.com.au
Direct Deposits to Newcastle Permanent BSB 650 000 Acct No 915531504
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SOME SAMPLE PAGES FROM BOOK
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HERE IS MY FOREWORD TO THE BOOK ‘A LIFE IN LIGHT’ by ROGER SKINNER
The life and work of the regional artist
I have known Roger Skinner for over 30years and I can say that in the art of photography, he is a regional artist who cares little for his farawayness from the city. Spending a lifetime devoted to the camera and its image Skinner has pursued a range of activities in the camera club movement, professional photography associations and the photomedia art scene. Although he has an interest in the photograph as a historical document, Skinner’s practice also includes investigations into the nude, landscape, light painting, the self-image and environmental portraiture. His work has been extensively exhibited in solo and group shows, he has won numerous awards in every field of photographic endeavour, and his work is held in major private and public collections.
Not only is Roger Skinner the consummate artist, he is an organiser, facilitator and committee member. He is a builder and champion of networks that provide opportunities for others. Many will know him for his coordination of the Muswellbrook Art Photography Prize, an award won by major Australian photographers and judged by elite Australian curators, critics and commentators of the art. As a conference presenter, teacher and mentor, he has inspired and enthused many to extend their photography activities. For some time he was Education Officer at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Gallery, and has also served as the Director of the Contemporary Group of the Australian Photographic Society.
But has the remoteness of his practice affected recognition for his own work? Apart from significant urban artists who have taken to living fashionably in the country after they have achieved their fame – how many regional artists have well deserved recognition in this country? Not many … not many. Recognition or not Roger Skinner just gets on with making his art and pursuing his other activities.
The regional space, people and their stories have revealed themselves to Skinner. His eclectic visual style exudes a kind of poetic response to the subject and life. Roger Skinner’s photographs tell us not only something of his interest and his eye for the world, but also how these photographs can touch with our experience of life and tell us something about ourselves.
Proximity has located Skinner in regional New South Wales, and despite a modicum of national infiltration of his work, this isolation may have served him well. However one could ponder the broader recognition and opportunities for his work had he lived in the creative networked proximity of a big city. Perhaps the extensive body of work presented in this book may enable a repositioning of his work within a pantheon of significant Australian photographers.
Dr Doug Spowart
Co-Founder – Centre for Regional Arts Practice
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IMAGES OF THE BOOK FOLLOW…
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All texts and photographs except that by Victoria Cooper ©Doug Spowart
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