Posts Tagged ‘Toowoomba’
BOX of BOOKS Event – Toowoomba!
Looking at the books – Cobb+Co Museum, Toowoomba
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Around 35 photobook enthusiasts gathered at the Cobb+Co Museum on January 27 to view the Photobook Club’s Box of Books and talk about photobooks. The event brought together local photo identities John Elliott, Graham Burstow, David Seeto and Victoria Cooper. Eric Victor, Ian Poole and Qld College of Art Masters student Maureen Trainor came from the Brisbane side of the Range. The meeting took place in the gallery space of the ICON on ICONS photographic exhibition that also concluded on that day.
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Convener of the event Doug Spowart opens the Box of Books
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The seven books were viewed and discussed at length. Comments about the books included the following:
“Each book is a very personal communiqué”
“The books demand viewing at many different levels – the narrative, the design, the production, the conceptual nature of the work…”
“This is a very Eurocentric view – I wonder what the American view would look like?”
“How do these books compare with the Australian photobook scene?”
A great deal of discussion took place over the comment – “Where are the captions … the works that help me to understand what the photographer is trying to say?” One respondent commented on Roland Barthes’ concept of ‘The death of the author and the birth of the reader’ – meaning that the reader needs to connect with the images and draw on their own life experiences.
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Donald Webber’s Interrogations drew quite a few comments – tension and the power of the portraits made in such a circumstance.
Linda Seeto, Victoria Cooper, Hardy and Alison Ahlhaus looking at Webber’s Interrogations
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The crowd favourite was Anne Sophie Merryman’s Mrs. Merryman’s Collection … a superb design, delicate paper, the see-through of texts and the amazingly bizarre collection of post card photographs and comments.
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Mrs. Merryman’s Collection
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Paul Graham’s The Present and its gate-fold format presented a viewing challenge as each image or group of images needed to be revealed by folding-out the page – an extended haptic experience, and considering the size of the book, it slowed down the read and brought the busy street scenes to a slowed motion.
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Tony Coonan, Linda and David Seeto look at Paul Graham’s book
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The Box of Books will be in Brisbane on Monday the 3rd of February and then be off to New Zealand for the next stage in its journey.
Thanks to the Cobb+Co Museum for providing the venue. The Photobook Club and the publishers who donated the books for the opportunity for us to see, touch, and read these books.
Until the next Photobook Club event in our area….
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This Photobook Club BOX OF BOOKS event was coordinated by Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper of the Centre for Regional Arts Practice.
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Other images from the event…
Looking at a book…
Ann Alcock and Bev Lacey
Toula, Ian Poole and Louise
Tony Coonan, Victoria Cooper and Anne Howard
Judi Neuman and Phillipa Hodges
Graham Burstow and Maureen Trainor
Looking at some of the ephemera from the Box of Books
John Elliott and Eric Victor
Helen Gibbs and Lucy Robertson-Cunninghame
Gerry Saide looking closely at a book
Doug Spowart opens the box
Room view at the Cobb+Co Museum
The Cobb+Co Museum panorama
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The Photobook Club’s BOX of BOOKS in Toowoomba
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THE PHOTOBOOK CLUB: Box of Books Event – Toowoomba!
The Photobook Club’s BOX of BOOKS arrives in Toowoomba
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In 2013, and now in 2014, a box of photobooks will be traveling over 30,000 miles, stopping off at each of the Photobook Club branches around the world in order to promote discussion of the physical photobook.
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Now, The Box of Books is in Toowoomba —- Queensland, Australia.
As part of the LAST DAY of the ICONS on ICONS show at the Cobb+Co Museum in Toowoomba featuring the work of John Elliott, Graham Burstow, David Seeto Victoria Cooper (photobooks) and Doug Spowart – a special viewing of the THE PHOTOBOOK CLUB’s BOX of BOOKS will be made available. Come and sit with some of the world’s best photobooks and turn the pages – and release the narrative that each book contains.
THE DATE: Between 1 – 3pm, January 27 – The AUSTRALIA DAY Holiday
THE VENUE: The Cobb+Co Museum, 27 Lindsay Street, Toowoomba.
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A small charge of $5 is being made to cover postage to the Boxes’ next destination in Auckland New Zealand.
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The book viewing and discussions will take place between 1-3pm. The Museum’s coffee shop is open for lunch as well as drinks and snacks throughout the afternoon until 4pm.
Take a road trip into the country – Visitors to the Cobb+Co Museum from outside the Toowoomba Region will gain FREE admittance if they advise that they are attending this special event.
This Photobook Club BOX OF BOOKS event is coordinated by Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper of the Centre for Regional Arts Practice.
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Cobb+Co Museum – Icons on Icons events
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What’s in the Box?
A big thanks to Mack Books (London), Schilt Publishing (Amsterdam) and also to Filipe Casaca who have all contributed books to this project. If you are a publisher or photographer who would like a book to be included in ‘Box of Books #2′ then please get in touch. The following books were chosen for the discussions of content, narrative and physical properties that I hope they will encourage – Matt from the Photobook Club
Another Language
Mårten Lange
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: Combining images of flora, fauna and natural phenomena in an intimate and beautifully crafted book, Lange teases out a subtle narrative – a meteor crashes, a landmass is visible and a distant planet occupies the final page – but the book is more akin to the workings of a scientist collecting specimens. Together the photographs create a cryptic and heterogeneous index of nature, with recurring shapes, patterns and texture, where the clarity and simplicity of the individual photographs contrasts with the enigmatic whole.
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Blue Mud Swamp
Filipe Casaca
(Self published, 2012)
The blurb: (Filipe Casaca) Blue Mud Swamp. The shoreline, hot and humid, is a postcard that attracts and invites Men to settle where the land meets the Yellow Sea. However, the reality is dissonant. Although surrounded by natural beauty, beaches and entertainment facilities, the city and its urban spaces transmits, as a whole, a feeling of artificiality. In some cases the abundance created a certain degradation and abandonment. With a splendor that takes us back to a recent past, a certain melancholy is present, as happens with all that was new, colorful and perfect but perished with time.
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Interrogations
Donald Webber
(Schilt, 2012)
The blurb: Interrogations is the result of [Webber’s] personal quest to uncover the hidden meaning of the bloody 20th Century. In dialogue with writer Larry Frolick – whose own ancestors had been decimated in the final months of WW II – Weber insistently and provocatively addresses his questions both to the living survivors and to the ghosts of the State’s innumerable victims, resurrecting their final hours by taking their point of view, and performing a kind of incantatory meditation over their private encounters with Power.
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Lick Creek Line
Ron Jude
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: Ron Jude’s new book, Lick Creek Line, extends and amplifies his ongoing fascination with the vagaries of photographic empiricism, and the gray area between documentation and fiction. In a sequential narrative punctuated by contrasting moments of violence and beauty, Jude follows the rambling journey of a fur trapper, methodically checking his trap line in a remote area of Idaho in the Western United States. Through converging pictures of landscapes, architecture, an encroaching resort community, and the solitary, secretive process of trapping pine marten for their pelts, Lick Creek Line underscores the murky and culturally arbitrary nature of moral critique.
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Liquid Land
Rena Effendi
(Schilt, 2012)
The blurb: (Rena Effendi) Next to my father’s dead but iridescent butterflies, my photographs show life in some of the world’s most polluted areas, near Baku, where I was born and grew up. In my mind, the contrasting images gravitate towards each other – as I have to my father. Since working on this book I have gotten to know him much better than when he was alive. Salty Waters is the translation from Persian of the ‘Ab-sheuran’ Peninsula; in and around Baku, its main city, the earth is breathing with petroleum fumes, as oil oozes to the surface, turning it liquid. The Caspian Sea hugs the eagle-beak shaped land, salting its gas-pocked soil.
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Mrs. Merryman’s Collection
Anne Sophie Merryman
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: The book, Mrs. Merryman’s Collection, presents the postcards which together form the story of two intertwined lives – one life lived travelling the world through the postcard images, the other a child and then adult whose life and relationship to her own history and her future were influenced by the collection. While Anne-Marie and Anne Sophie never met, both their lives were inspired by the postcard collection – a relationship that was born, and continues to flourish, in the realms of the imagination.
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The Present
Paul Graham
(Mack, 2012)
The blurb: The Present is Paul Graham’s contribution to this legacy. The images in this book come unbidden from the streets of New York, but are not quite what we might expect, for each moment is brought to us with its double – two images taken from the same location, separated only by the briefest fraction of time. We find ourselves in sibling worlds, where a businessman with an eye patch becomes, an instant later, a man with an exaggerated wink; a woman eating a banana walks towards us, and a small focus shift reveals the blind man right behind her.
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Also in the box are other items that add to the idea and object of the photobook.
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A small charge of $5 is being made to cover postage to the Boxes’ next destination in Auckland New Zealand.
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ADVANCE NOTICE: Memory Collective Exhibition to open @ TRAG
The Memory Collective Invite
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The Team: Front Ashleigh Campbell, Julio Dunlop, Kirsty Lee, Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart
Back: David Usher, Jason Nash, Jesse Wright, Damien Kamholtz, Zac Rowling (weakling).
Not present: Peta Chalmers, Craig Allen & Jake Hickey
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Photographer Victoria Cooper reflecting on the Memory Collective project
Vicky photographs Kirsty
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Both Doug and I, familiar with collaborative projects, were excited to have the opportunity to connect with the multidisciplinary space that Damien Kamholtz was creating in the Memory Collective. So it was on one day in May, that each artist would bring to the chosen site their insights, instincts and life’s experience.
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There was a painting – a very large painting; a sculpture filled with water, a ‘pond’ to reflect and dissolve the evolving performance; a movement artist to reconfigure the idea or memory of painting; seven white ceramic bowls to containing pigments and a singular bowl left empty to float across the dark water of the pond.
The physical space did not easily present itself at first–but as the project unfolded and discussion flowed from the practical, logistical to the intellectual, conceptual–the site itself also became a collaborator in the project: the stage, the remnants of its warehouse history, the idiosyncratic control over the method of entering the space (all us had to crawl under a jammed roller door)
Was the space asserting its role?
This day was not just a visual experience–it was a total sensory and psychological immersion.
Although a part of the documentary team, including video and still photography, I was compelled to cross beyond the voyeuristic role of witness. I was motivated by the tension created from: anxiety for the loss of the original painting with the frisson of anticipation for the evolving transformation.
The movement artist’s touch with the painting was sensual and slow.
We moved like moths; entranced by the night-light . . . circling . . . unable to land nor escape . . .
This was not a performance rather it was about life, unrehearsed and ephemeral. Only through technology were small parts recorded to be later pieced, montaged and sewn together in a kind of rich layered memory tapestry. And, like memory, there are gaps, fuzzy distortions of scale and time lines, loud visually busy moments together with quiet, serene and ethereal meditations.
I began this project with an intuition that it would be both inspiring and exhilarating to work with this creative group of Toowoomba based artists. Damien has, with delicacy and grace, enabled and cultivated a fertile collaborative space, which continues to extend the potential for the creative work.
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Kirsty addresses the painting in performance
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A recollection of the MEMORY COLLECTIVE collaboration from Doug Spowart.
Doug photographs the performace
Working as a regional artist can be an isolating experience. Your networks are often big city based, coastal and a long way from your home on the range. I am familiar with collaborative art-making but it has usually been with my artist partner Victoria Cooper.
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The Memory Collective was quite a different collaborative affair. As an individual artist I could never have thought up let alone coordinated, as Damien has, all of the interdisciplinary artists and artforms into one time–one space–one purpose–one artpiece. Meetings, Facebook discussions and site inspections enabled a real feeling of connection with the creativity of these fellow regional artists and their ideas, aspects of each discipline’s needs and potential for contribution.
https://wotwedid.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/memory-collective-a-performance-documentary-project/.
https://www.facebook.com/memorycollectiveproject
Kirsty Lee – the paint portrait
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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XMAS STREET NOCTURNE: A new site project
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On the road and in the street
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In past years after a day’s travelling doing fieldwork we usually aim for an overnight stay in a country town to rest for the night before attacking the road again. On arrival in the town we drive down the main street to inspect the available/affordable accommodation options. By nightfall we are usually ensconced in the motel room: organising our day’s imaging, catching up with emails, dinner and so on. The next day we move on . . .
This year during our summer field trip, motivated by the results of our recent Wooli Nocturne Project, we decided to document at twilight an aspect of each town where we stayed. This meant arriving early so that we could walk down the main street before sunset. Our objective was to survey the site-specific arrangement of town’s Xmas display, (whether present or absent), and identify features that at dusk would also be artificially illuminated. Returning later we would shoot under the deep blue/magenta skies of the early evening and the night lights.
In this work we are not alone, as photographers across the history of the art have used this montage of artificial and natural light effects to document urban environments. The development of this work has been influenced over time by a sustained interest in artists like Edward Hopper and Jeffrey Smart, and the photographers Eugène Atget, Brassaï, William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, Gregory Crewdson and Brian Brake. More recently in Australia, artists and photographers notably Bill Henson and Mark Kimber have also explored aspects of this genre.
Recognising that the inherent nature of this transient light evokes the uncanny, an unseen presence or the interstitial filmic moment captured as a still is fundamental to our project. In this work the documentary photograph is not just a record of the idiosyncratic nature of each town’s main street and its Xmas light show as in these lighting conditions everyday objects are transformed from their daytime function. The prosaic nature of these towns, when photographed in the dusk light, becomes part of a found aesthetic: a site-specific monument to nocturnal light; a visual narrative of light, colour and form.
Xmas Street Nocturne: A site-specific project by Victoria Cooper + Doug Spowart
5 January 2013
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Towns and cities imaged:
- Albury
- Bright
- Coonabarabran
- Cowra
- Narrabri
- Narrandera
- Toowoomba
THE RANGE: Centre for Regional Arts Practice Event
ARE YOU A REGIONAL ARTIST?
Jennifer Wright (Summers) makes a point at the Centre for Regional Arts Practice event
The Centre for Regional Arts Practice (C.R.A.P.) event, ‘Are you a regional artist?’ was part of the 2012 RANGE festival of art and culture program. Attended by around thirty people from around the Toowoomba region the event took place at The GRID Creative Space. The stimulus for the event and its question is the series of artist survey books produced by C.R.A.P. founders Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart. Topics covered by the books deal with the issues and the experiences that Cooper and Spowart have encountered over many years as regional artists. Surveys have included the following titles:
#1 How do you know you are a regional artist?
#2 How do you now you operate a regional arts business?
#3 The inland regional artist & the beach
#4 The regional artist & climate change
#5 The regional artist & the global financial crisis
#6 Swine flu & the regional artist
#7 Air travel & the regional artist
#8 Flooding in your studio
#9 Summer lethargy
#10 The New Zealand regional artist
#11 Vote 1: Campaign for Regional Artists for Government Election (Democracy)
#12 Checklist of the signs that extractive mining has taken over your regional community.
7 of the 12 Artist Survey books published by the Centre for Regional Arts Practice
Six local artists accepted the invitation to participate in the event by selecting an artist survey book that related to their experiences and interests. They were asked to select passages from the books and to present and discuss these passages. The artists were: Jack Atley, Fancy Darling, John Elliott, Elysha Gould, Sue Lostroh and Jennifer Wright (Summers) [Their Bios are included at the end of this post]. The panel members represent a diversity of practice which is both grounded by necessity but also enjoying the freedom to be at the creative edge. Toowoomba’s art community is evolving and seemingly drawing strength from a fertile montage of place-minded inclusivity along with strident individualism. This motivated group of young and established artists are moving with the changing landscape of the regional arts practice, while also operating within a national and global perspective.
At the Centre for Regional Arts Practice event @ The Grid in Toowoomba
The Artist Survey books acted as catalyst and provocateurs for discussion and commentary where each panellist presented a particular slant on their selected subject. What followed was an organic and freeform forum with a range of questions being discussed and challenged. The main theme—the identity crisis of regional artist—was at the centre; the responses made the issues relevant, while evoking alternative considerations.
After each panellist’s segment the audience was asked if the ‘agreed’ or ‘disagreed’ with the proposition put by each Artists Survey Book. Some topics, such as ‘Do you need a week at the beach’, ‘How do you know if you operate a regional business’ and ‘The signs that mining has taken over your community’ resulted in a majority support. Other books, including ‘Would you agree that regional artists should form their own political party’ and ‘The regional artist and the GFC’, drew out other interesting issues and challenges from the panel and attendees beyond just the questions posed in the books. In some cases the outcome of the discussion recognised that all artists, from both regions and city, connect with the same issues. Perhaps all artists are regional?
Sue Lostroh asks ‘Do regional artists need a week at the beach?’
From the panellist’s responses it became evident that regional artists are passionate people with opinions and ideas about their practice and the opportunities and challenges of regional life. The feedback coming from some of the informal discussions at the end of the night suggested there could be future events of this nature in the form of a forum.
From our perspective this event brought not just consensus, but importantly new perspectives on, and challenges to, what it means to be a regional artist living and working on The RANGE.
Finally, attendees were invited to contribute comments to the forthcoming Artists Survey Book ‘The regional artist and the artists run initiative’. This edition of the C.R.A.P. Artist Survey book is intended to celebrate the role of the ARI in the Toowoomba region—the main theme of The RANGE festival.
Until next time …
C.R.A.P. event attendees chatting after the activity
PANELIST’S BIOS
Elysha Gould is a visual artist and Co-Director and founder of the artist-run initiative, made.Creative Space Toowoomba, and is the current Supervisor of Dogwood Crossing arts and cultural facility in Miles, Queensland. Living as an expatriate during the formative years of her childhood and having a mixed Australian-Japanese heritage, Elysha’s work incorporates paper cutting, drawing and installation that explore ideas of cross-cultural representations, contrasting contexts in the imagery and materials she uses.
Sue Lostroh was born in Sydney half a century ago, now living and working in Toowoomba, Sue has various tertiary qualifications the latest being a Master of Philosophy. However her study now happens on her travels to various destinations including Hong Kong, Singapore, England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and France so far. Sue trained as a printmaker but turned into an installation artist who has held a handful of solo exhibitions, her favourite was at the National Sculpture Forum in Canberra: Adopt my language say your farewells. She has participated in over 35 group shows in a variety of locations including Singapore, Brisbane and Toowoomba and she has a wide and varied arts experience curating about 80 exhibitions since 1987, she was an associate lecturer in visual arts and has supervised various research projects for students undertaking professional development. Sue is associated with the production, editing or authoring of over 30 exhibition catalogues, 4 CDs and a considerable number of education kits, didactics and exhibition support material. Sue currently coordinates the education programmes at TRAG
John Elliott is a writer/photographer based in Toowoomba and works all over Australia. He has 14 books to his credit, had his own exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and 25 works are in the NPG Collection. John’s work centres around his love of the bush and interest in people’s stories.
Jennifer Wright (Summers) is President at Arts Council Toowoomba and advocate for the establishment of Toowoomba Regional Council’s Public Art Policy. She enjoys building respectful relationships between councillors, businesses, artists and local community members. Jennifer was chosen to win the 2012 Regional Arts Australia award because she has demonstrated an outstanding contribution to the Arts in her community, her commitment to creating opportunity for regional artists and tireless volunteering work.
Fancy Darling is an artist and musician. Painting and drawing the erotic, classically trained pianist singer songwriter and cabaret performer, currently a resident artist at the grid.
Jack Atley: punk rock warlord.
Ashley Bunter, John Elliott and Alison Mooney
Jack Atley, Fancy Darling and Doug Spowart
31 December: NEW YEARS EVE – Toowoomba
TOOWOOMBA NEW YEARS EVE 2011 FIREWORKS
Not Sydney but it’s all we’ve got (and we can walk home in 5 minutes!)
A great five course dinner with friends, the fireworks was course two, Champagne, exotic cheeses, home-grown baked veggies, Felicity’s rack-of-lamb and Beverley’s famous raspberry sauce!!
Fireworks in 'Frogs Hollow' Toowoomba 7.30pm December 3, 2011
2012 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
July 23 : BIZOO ZINE BOOK LAUNCH
Launch of the BIZOO Book at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
“Bizoo: The Best, The Worst and The Trash That Never Made It” Bizoo was a street culture zine which gave a voice to the young people of Toowoomba from early in 2000 until 2006.
Its story and success lies in the needs that brought about the fanzine world-wide publishing phenomena over the last 20 years. Essentially it’s a response to the fact that the world is controlled by the media and those who control the media pretty well control everything. To combat the communication gulf those from outside the mainstream formed collectives and groups that collated the stories, prose and poems, lyrics, interviews, gig guides, critiques, rants, rude stuff and commentaries about their end of society.
These self-published newspapers/newsletters featured simple layouts, rough illustration and were usually output by photocopiers. Those making contributions did so under various tags and pseudonyms and distribution was made through coffee shops and venues where like-minded people hung out. Copies of the zine were free.
Ultimately the zine became respectable and these days many resemble ephemeral artists’ book styled products. Real names appear and the practice is studied and commented on by university academics – all a far cry from the anonymous gonzo street journalists of the early days.
Somehow, perhaps, the future of communication that was once carried in print by fanzines like Bizoo is gradually being eroded by Blogs (like this one), Facebook, texting and youTube.
But what is important is that the self-published zine created a voice for the stories that were not able to find a vehicle for communication. Now, with the publishing of BIZOO these chronicles of street-life in Toowoomba in the first half of the 21st century will pass into the history of our times. Something that the zinesters, now that their grown up a little, got or getting reliable work, having kids and getting on with life, will find an important and amusing part of their lives. The publication was supported by a grants from the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund and the Queensland Government’s RADF.
Make your own zine today ….
Cheers, Doug
SEE the following for more ….
The best place around to find zines – ElouiseQ at http://smellslikezines.com/
JOHN ELLIOTT’s YouTube video and interviews http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkZV5Mg16vQ
THE CHRONICLE Newspaper’s story http://www.thechronicle.com.au/
WHAT’S HAPPENING – Workshops, events, gigs etc. www.bizoo.com.au
May 30, 2011 – Celebration of a Life: Helen Cooper
Vicky speaking at the service PHOTO: John Elliott
Celebration of a Life: Helen Cooper
Susan Sontag in her seminal, although now somewhat aged, book On Photography stated that, ‘All photographs are momento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out that moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.’1
Vicky’s mother Helen passed away last week. Aged 89 Helen was quite a character and a local identity in Toowoomba. As part of a service to celebrate her life we assembled a photographic record of her life from images that she had gathered over the years as well as images from family and friends. Whilst the idea of a slide show is considered a standard part of any memorial service when we came to make our own, particularly as photographers, we were captivated by poignancy of the photographic image that we worked with.
Helen’s image collection traversed over half of the history of photography beginning with classic 1920s studio portraits, warm sepia family groups and dreamy high key pen-wash portraits. The oldest photograph is the youngest image of Helen is a snapshot: torn corners, creases, with the patina of being handled and held as a fragment of existence—perhaps even a cherished talisman in the journey of life.
The flow of images can only represent a small fraction of the life lived. Moments captured in a time and Place. Snaps of a young woman, full-length in the landscape, the bathing costume, and a young man appears, the young woman models on the beach full of the promise of life. The young man, Reg, becomes husband—a swatch of beautifully hand-coloured wedding prints attests to that, a house follows and then the first child, then two and soon there are three—another house, another baby.
The photographic process changes and as such identifies the passage of time. The photographs transition from 1930s soft black and white hand coloured studio portraits, to home processed contact prints, on to the gritty 1970s black and white and finally to the dominance of colour firstly from square colour images of 126 Kodak Instamatic cameras to contemporary digital.
The images depict a family growing up, having fun at Currumbin Bird Sanctuary, one graduates from university. The flow of life continues … weddings grand children – all come and visit Helen and Reg. In the middle years colour photographs emerge from the albums—a pink dress and Reg in a sunlit garden, a new home in a wilderness, a place that we now know is the metropolis of Coolum. New Guinea holidays, another image with Reg holding someone’s baby.
Then Helen faces a new life on her own, a new house—with the garden, family memories surround, and the photographs show meetings with family members, now older with their own grown up kids. More weddings, pictures with birds an ANZAC parade, a scene in a coffee shop—the images shift from Helen to two, and then three generations of Cooper. Helen grows older, family visits, church groups, breakfasts downtown—another hat, another . . . another
The photograph as Sontag once quipped is ‘incontrovertible proof’ of existence—but for whom is the proof required? Helen’s collected images were undoubtedly her memories, a record of moments – memorable ones. Moments that define a life and life shared. At the time of her passing the photographs become as Sontag suggests, ‘both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence’. 2
The images in this sequence present both presence and absence—photographs provide a poignant bridge to what has been, memories and an understanding of a life well lived.
1 On Photography, Susan Sontag, 1979, Penguin Books, page 15
2 ibid, page 16
Helen Cooper - YouTUBE Video
Toowoomba Floods – January 10, 2011
January 10, 2011 FLOODS IN TOOWOOMBA.
I went home for lunch on the 10th and, after checking the Bureau of Meteorology – and noticing a big red/orange blob heading toward Toowoomba, Vicky and I waited for a storm. That’s not unusual – we’ve seen plenty over the years. But this one seem ominous.
The rain became heavy, and the heavier again. Water began to flow from the tank overflow and follow its familiar path into the back yard. But then the water level in the back yard began to rise up towards the house and studio. And it rose more and more – torrential rain thundering on the roof.
Water run off from the road in front of the house began to make its way through our drive-way and through the space between the house and studio. The backed-up water in the back yard continued to rise – flooding the underside of the house and creeping up to just below the top step into the house and studio. It held that height for twenty minutes or so. I grabbed the camera.
View from the top step of our studio
Eventually the rain eased and we checked the aftermath. Backyard flooded, under the house flooded – huge volumes of water running down the street. We investigated – just a minute or two from our home a torrent of brown turgid water was crashing through the once peaceful parkland at the end of our street.
Our back yard
Neighbours were out on the street as well – watching, wondering about the awesome scene before us. Later we were to learn of a child and mother had been swept to their deaths from a flooded car a block away upstream in James Street.
East Creek in flood at the bottom of Burns Street
Flood waters at the bottom of our street
The rest is a history that we all know from the media . . . Somethings were never to be the same again!
Cheers – Doug
ReNEWSing the Newspaper: A group exhibition @ Futures Gallery
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An exhibition in which the local newspaper has been reinterpreted by 5 artists and reconstituted as a statement of a regional community in Australia.
The ‘ReNEWSing’ exhibition panorama @ Futures Gallery
Bev Lacey discusses one of the books
Artists: Kylie Noakes, Bev Lacey, Jess Martin, Yseult Taylor, Angela Moar and Doug Spowart
Exhibition visitors: Tina Wilson and Sue Lostroh
Sandy Pottinger, Bev Lacey + Victoria Cooper
Doug + the book ‘Have you got your Chronicle today’
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BEV LACEY’S OPENING REMARKS
Each day the focus of my time in the office is spent on production of images for the next edition.
Or as in recent times, the production of images and video, for immediate release online and also for the printed edition.
The process is more in keeping with what other people’s expectations are and what they envisage as the final product.
This attention to a set formula – i.e. go to job, get back, quickly download and move onto next job – often narrows the thinking.
In the past when I have browsed through the work produced by the art students taking The Chronicle and creating an artist book, and this is an exciting interpretive assignment, I have been amazed, inspired, envious and a little in awe of the works produced.
I am always in awe of “the artists mind” the ability to see, the ability to transform often unobscure pieces into works of art that I cannot draw away from.
So I thought, taking about the works would not be a challenge at all. But in an attempt to say something worth hearing I am at a loss.
No not really……….
THE BOOKS – an artist book for me needs to be a tactile experience……
As I looked through the books on YouTube I found myself longing to turn the pages and feel the textures.
Does that make your books successful?? that I want to touch them, and experience more than flipping through them on a computer screen – yes I think so.
Yseult Taylor:
Sadly I found the interpretation on what was published on May 10, similar to what a lot of people think that The Chronicle is about; depressing stories about loss of life, jobs and accidents. We, the media do have a tendency to focus on the negative and in creating a book about what was published in the paper on that day May 10 – yes ….you have successfully captured the essence of our storytelling in that edition.
In saying that though, a new perspective was put to the viewer – a rather blunt and interesting division between the headline and advertising.
Jess Martin:
The constant, barrage of text and information which we all have in our lives at the moment,
Information – some useful most not.
Entering though the door of the commercial world, being given light relief , in cartoons and then the barrage again.
The page that I found most fascinating is the blank one – it stopped me in my tracks and you can feel your whole body just breathe out that sigh of relief – time out from the information overload.
Angela Moar:
As a reader , certain words or phrases mean more to one person than another, I found your isolation of the phrases that affected you, an interesting concept.
It make me think of how even in conversation; each individual’s interpretation of even, what I am saying here tonight, can be perceived differently.
Each person hears on a different level of understanding, all totally dependent on our individual life experiences , personal circumstances, and what we think of the person retelling the story.
And the stick men, the little soldiers that represent whom we all are, representing a formula, a set idea of what is news and the storyteller.
Klyie Noakes:
Kylie has isolated happier moments; selecting from the social pages. The moment in time, often totally set up where a photographer captures a moment in a social event.
The quotation, the who am I really, the what is that person thinking at that precise moment is often lost on the viewer as the person is represented, flat – not whole in three dimensional perspective, but as a “happy snap” of people out and about enjoying a moment .
But their real lives are still there, their thoughts their own we just don’t see beyond the smile, a mistake we make even when meeting other people.
Doug Spowart:
The multi layering effect of what is “The Chronicle” is I am sure what Doug is telling us.
A more sceptical self – realises the focus on advertising of cheap deals could be the reality.
But no – I am convinced Doug’s layering, is about a more in depth view of how production of a newspaper happens. The many people, the many processes, the many facets of a life in the office that create a product.
Overall:
Each of the books has that wonderful inviting appeal.
that “what is the artist trying to say to me, what was the artist thinking at the time of creating” ,
and I believe the success of these books lies simply in that – the questions that it asks the viewer, the simple fact that the viewer will ponder the questions, and the answers they themselves come up with – long after they put the books down.
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Written by Cooper+Spowart
September 5, 2012 at 7:09 pm
Posted in Artists Books, Doug Spowart, Exhibitions, Meeting People
Tagged with Artists Books, Bev Lacey, social commentary, The Chronicle, Toowoomba