Posts Tagged ‘Victoria Cooper’
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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ARTISTS BOOK FLASH MOB create collaborative Artists Survey Book
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Artist Book Flash Mob and the Artists Survey Book @ Grafton Regional Gallery
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Artists Survey #15
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During our Artist in Residence at the Grafton Regional Gallery we chose to conduct a Centre for Regional Arts Practice event that would culminate in a collaborative Artist Survey chapbook. The 15th edition of the Artists Survey comments on the idea that regional artists engaging travel as a necessary part of their arts practice. The book is entitled NOMAD: Journeying for art.
Whether it is for residencies, such as we are currently undertaking, or to attend conferences, seminars and workshops – or – just to encounter something new to inform one’s life or feelings for place, all artists travel. This theme was to be embraced by each of the participating artists. Three of the ‘Artists Book Flash Mob’ came from Brisbane, Lismore and Alstonville and were joined by 5 local Grafton artists for the two-day event. The contributing artists were: Julie Barratt, Cher Breeze, Darren Bryant, Helen Cole, Victoria Cooper, Jo Kambourian, Louise Kirby, Evey Miller, Cass Samms, Hayley Skeggs and Doug Spowart.
Each artist brought objects and materials that were then transformed by their approach to the theme through of their chosen medium. Art making techniques included stamping, collage, digital montage, altered pages, painting, photomontage, photocopy art, images of glass etching, stitching, sewing and paper sculpture. Many ideas were resolved through collaboration with fellow artists during the event.
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Artists Survey #15 NOMAD:Journeying for Art
Two pages from inside the book – Artists Survey #15 NOMAD: Journeying for Art
Two pages from inside the book – Artists Survey #15 NOMAD: Journeying for Art
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The workspace – must be lunchtime @ the cafe!
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Frenetic times of activity were interspersed with conversation, a sunset soiree, Thai dinner and coffee and cakes from the gallery’s café. At noon on the second day so much still needed to be completed. Each artist concentrated on their own multiple artworks – requiring 60 individual pieces. By mid afternoon, as each artist’s work was near completion, attention could be turned toward the collaborative outcome: cutting, printing and folding covers, collating of the pages, and beginning the process of sewing the finishing 3 hole pamphlet stitch.
At end of the weekend all that was left to do was the binding of the books and each artist has taken their five copies to finish in personal time. We all departed with a renewed energy enriched by the experience and enjoyment of artmaking along with the exchange of ideas and knowledge that was shared in the intimate space of the studio. Further copies of the NOMAD: Journeying for art will be passed on to significant artists book collections around the country.
We thank the participating artists for their participation and contribution to another C.R.A.P. (Centre for Regional Arts Practice) event.
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The artist book flash mob
Helen at work
Hayley at work
Louise at work
Jo at work
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© 2013 Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart. The copyright in individual artworks resides with the artists.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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MEMORY COLLECTIVE: A performance documentary project
The Memory Collective painting by Damien Kamholtz
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The Memory Collective is a multi-disciplinary collaboration orchestrated by artist Damien Kamholtz. Kamholtz states: The Memory Collective Project is a creative collaboration between 12 artists across eight artistic disciplines exploring concepts and themes relating to the human condition such as change, constants, history, refection and memory. The artworks created during the project will make up an exhibition to be held at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery in September 2013.
There are different stages to the project. First Kamholtz created a large 2.2 metre square painting, while sculptor, Jessie Wright constructed the large vessel to hold the water. Kamholtz’s painting is embedded with personal meaning in the form of fragments of his past art, the ashes of diaries. In the presence of this artwork we are drawn into a poetic landscape where faces emerge; symbols and totems slip from passive dark spaces and come into conscious awareness.
The second stage of the work was the performance in the form of 9 responses to the painting by Kristy Lee. The painting and the pool created the reflective and reflexive performative space and the transformative process of the original painting then began. Integral to the space were David Usher’s delicate pots; these vessels contained the pallet of shades that then shrouded and clouded the memory of the work. Over the course of the day the painting’s physical form was transformed into something different loosing its current visual form as only a memory.
Our part of the collaboration was to witness, respond and record the transformation of the work over the day. The next stage of the Memory Collective’s work will continue over the next month our component will be to create 9 large collaged photograph memory states of the work for the show in September. Works by others include; a video art piece, a documentary video, a soundscape, interviews, prose and poems. It is a significant project and is being funded by the RADF and supported through the exhibition at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery.
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A fragment of photographic memories made by us for the MEMORY COLLECTIVE…
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Damien Kamholtz in the performance space with the painting and pool
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Doug documents the space …… Photo: Victoria Cooper
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Kirsty and painting – in the early state…
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Kirsty Lee performs before the painting
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State 3 Kirsty applies paint to the paining…
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Hand paint
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Kirsty Lee and her interaction with the painting … around Stage 6
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Blue hand…
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Kirsty Lee in a frenetic stage…
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Kirsty and brushes before the pool
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Paint fluid in the pool…
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Towards the final state…
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The final state …
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Damien discussing movement with Kirsty
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Kirsty Lee towards the end of the performance
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Another creative work from the performance by Jason Nash…
Jason Nash – Time lapse video
CLICK HERE to see Jason Nash’s ‘Memory Collective’ time-lapse video
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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: Craig Allen & Jake Hickey
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Toowoomba Chronicle 17 June, 2013 by Kate Dodd PHOTO: Dave Noonan
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© 2013 Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart for The Memory Collective
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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COOPER SCROLLS @ Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery
Victoria Cooper in the Off The Wall installation of three scrolls from the series of five
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ABOUT ‘THE STORIES OF THE GORGE’ ON SHOW @ TRAG
Victoria Cooper’s digital montage Stories from the Gorge scrolls, made over ten years ago were included in Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery show. The exhibition was entitled Off the wall and was on show in Gallery 2 and Amos Gallery in May 2013.
The information about the exhibition that follows comes from the exhibition room sheet prepared at the time by Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery Exhibitions Officer, Ashleigh Bunter:
The works in the exhibition have been selected from the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery’s City Collection. They have been placed simply together due to their three-dimensional nature and to highlight their derivation from the traditional two-dimensional picture plane.
This exhibition demonstrates the way that artists manipulate physical depth within their works which can often create a greater engagement between the object and the viewer. Interestingly, many of the works in this exhibition focus upon environment, whether it is the natural, public or the domestic environment. Materiality is also a common consideration. Throughout this exhibition one can see the influence of ‘the collector’, artists who gather images or common materials, reusing and reinterpreting them to create their art.
Victoria Cooper’s Stories from the Gorge: Order, chaos and the story of the hillside is a Chinese-landscape-scroll inspired series that represents “the last bastion of a natural chaos and order, an anti-culture, occurring on the fringes of agriculture.”[i] Human effects on the natural environment are central to Cooper’s practice and her prints and artists’ books in various formations lead the view from a flat two dimensional plane into the landscapes she investigates. These printed scrolls rise up from handmade acrylic boxes like the tall gum trees on their surfaces.
Other artists in the Off The Wall show include; Michael Schlitz, Marieke Dench, Tiffany Shafran, Judith Kentish, and Brigid Cole-Adams and the exhibition will be on the wall until May 26, 2013.
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PRIZES AND AWARDS
2001 The Gorge was purchased by Australian Library of Art at the State Library of Queensland
2001 – Photographer and gallery director Sandy Edwards awarded The Gorge, First Prize in the Muswellbrook Photography Award
2001 – MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor awarded The Cliff, First Prize for Works on Paper, Martin Hanson Memorial Art Awards, Gladstone Regional Art Gallery and Museum
2002 – Five Stories from the Gorge was a Finalist in the 2002 Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Foundation for the Arts Photography Award at the Gold Coast City Art Gallery was selected by Isobel Crombie Curator at the National Gallery of Victoria
2002 –The triptych was acquired during its showing in the Toowoomba Biennial Acquisitive Award selected by Julie Ewington, then Curator at the Queensland Art Gallery..
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Three images of the Stories from the Gorge triptych as presented @TRAG
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THE BACKSTORY OF THE SCROLLS AND THE SERIES OF 5 WORKS
Cooper’s scrolls were presented for the TRAG exhibition as a triptych, however in the original exhibition, entitled Searching for the Sublime, there were five scrolls. Searching for the Sublime was a collaborative project with sculptor Jim Roberts, fellow artist Doug Spowart and curator Deborah Godfrey. The inspiration for the project was a wilderness area in the Helidon Hills a mere 20 kilometres north-east of Toowoomba. Supported by an RADF Grant, the show featured Roberts’ sculptures, Spowart’s abstract water photographs, and Cooper’s scrolls and was shown at 62 Robertson Gallery in Brisbane in August 2001.
Searching for the Sublime @ Gallery 62 Robinson PHOTO: Courtesy of 62 Robertson
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Five Stories from the Gorge installation at SQIT Gallery
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The images were assembled as a photomontage in the tiny, by current sizes, Blueberry iMac computer. At times Victoria juggled 200 layers in one Adobe Photoshop document to create the fiction panoramas. Seeing the whole image was a problem as most of the time Cooper’s view was no bigger than the iMac screen requiring her to ‘scroll’ the image up and down–just as you will do in looking at the images in this post. Saving the files took 20-30 minutes and the system often crashed. The images were printed in pigment inks on an Ilford Novajet printer onto Hahnemühle Japan ‘rice paper’ by IMT on the Gold Coast. Victoria worked with artist Wim de Vos to design the bespoke handmade acrylic boxes. The design featured the ability for the box to not only serve as a container, but also act as a device to display the scrolls.
The complete set of scrolls, Five Stories from the Gorge, was shown in many venues and awards (see prize list at the end of this post), including Photospace at National Art School, Australian National University, Canberra. Canberra Times arts reviewer Myra McIntyre commented that Cooper’s works are:
Most elegant and fascinating photographic objects are Landscape stories, a series of five Asian-inspired scrolls. Cooper crawls, wanders and flies through the Australian landscape gathering hundreds of objects, patterns, and perspectives that she digitally intertwines, creating a continuum of almost imperceptibly diverse perspectives and a physical sense of vertigo in the viewer.
Review, Canberra Times, May 10, 2002
In 2002 the triptych was acquired during its showing in the Toowoomba Biennial Acquisitive Award selected by Julie Ewington, then Curator at the Queensland Art Gallery. Interestingly the rules of the competition at the time restricted entries to work that had not previously won an art award–as such only the three scrolls The Story of the Hillside, Chaos and Order were entered. When purchased the two other scrolls were orphaned from the set.
So here in this blog, we reunite the Five Stories from the Gorge presented in a form for you to scroll/stroll through … Enjoy.
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By Doug Spowart
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Story of the Cliff
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Story of the Gorge
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Story of the Hillside
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
WHIPPING UP A FOTO FRENZY
Dr Doug opens the FOTO FRENZY Photographic Centre in Brisbane
The much awaited reopening of the expanded FOTO FRENZY Photographic Centre in Coorparoo took place on Friday, January 18, 2013. Attended by a crowd of around 100 well-wishers the event heralded a new beginning for dilettantes of a wide range of photography interests including:
- photography workshops
- photographic gallery
- fine art printing, mounting and framing
- photographic darkroom hire
- studio hire
- one-on-one consultations
Mark photographs the Foto Frenzy Team PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
The FOTO FRENZY space is shared with BRISBANE CAMERA HIRE, specialist in providing a range of photographic gear and unusual accessories.
The Foto Frenzy team includes Brisbane photo identities Ian Poole, Cam Attree, Tony Holden and Darren Jew. All four are photographers and have specialist areas of activity from photography as art, to location and underwater photography, nude and glamour photography and photography as personal expression. Darren Jew is well known in photo workshop circles for the ‘Faces and Places’ workshop that he established with Jim McKitrick in the late 1980s.
The team l-r Darren Jew, Tony Holden, Cam Attreee, Ian Poole and Susan BCH PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
The Foto Frenzy team have been together for twelve months in a modest facility just a short distance away from the new home. Now with the larger facility and the linkup with Susan & Jacob and Brisbane Camera Hire new and amazing opportunities for the business and the clients that they service are available.
Doug Spowart opens Foto Frenzy PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
As someone with a history in photography that connects with most of the Foto Frenzy team, as well as being a former Director of the photo gallery and workshop—Imagery Gallery, (that operated in Brisbane from 1980-1995), I was asked to open the new Foto Frenzy Photographic Centre. Some of my comments in the opening speech were…
The other day I was made aware of a TIME magazine article in which the claim was made that 10% of all the photographs ever made in the over 170 year history of photography were made in 2012!! This statement is evidence that with digital photography, including the now ubiquitous mobile phone, means that anyone can take photographs—But does that mean that everyone IS a photographer? My opinion is no—Because there is something special in the blood of the photographer that enables them, or demands of them, that just seeing and snapping isn’t enough.
True photographers want to ‘craft’ and create images that are about significant visual communication. Sometimes powerful, sometimes sublime, sometimes nonsensical or humorous and sometimes, perhaps even bland and boring. We know of these kinds of photographs because they tell us about beauty in the world, of atrocity, of feast, famine and of love and the human condition. These images inspire us and drive us, perhaps even spur us on to be better photographers ourselves—and this is where we encounter the need for networking, training, nurturing support, guidance and technology support. This is where the Foto Frenzy suite of services will link with our lives.
I congratulate the Foto Frenzy team and Brisbane Camera Hire for their vision, entrepreneurship and financial commitment in establishing this photographic centre. And what I see are the great opportunities for those of us interested in being a part of what photography is, and where it is going—to have a place that will be a hub, or should I say, a frenzied hive of activity.
It is with great pleasure that I declare the Foto Frenzy centre open….
Ian Poole in his thank you advised the attendees that Cooper and Spowart were to be, in a couple of months, the Foto Frenzy’s first Artists in Residence.
SPECIAL NOTE: We will be conducting a range of workshops @ Foto Frenzy over the following months. The topics of our workshops and consultations will include aspects of our PhD research into photobooks, creative photography practice, narrative and story telling in the photo sequence and aspects of social media, in particular Linkedin, Blogs and YouTube. We will also be available for one-on-one project/concept development.
To let us know you would like to be advised of the workshops when they become available
Contact us <Greatdivide@a1.com.au>
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Foto Frenzy @ Corparoo, cnr Old Cleveland & Bennets Rds PHOTO: Doug Spowart
The Foto Frenzy Gallery PHOTO: Victoria Cooper
Doug Spowart and Victoria Cooper in the Foto Frenzy Photobooth
Foto Frenzy opening shadows PHOTO: Doug Spowart
Cheers Doug and Victoria
EX LIBRIS: WHO OWNS THIS BOOK? A Queensland artists’ bookplate project
Zealous book collectors have always prominently placed inside the first few pages of a book their Ex Libris bookplate as a sign of ownership of books that they acquire. Over time these bookplates became a kind of specialised artwork created by artists and designers—not only for their own collected books but also for the libraries of serious book collectors. Bookplates then, are not just the carriers of the name of a book’s [one time] owner, but are also a thing of artistic integrity and beauty. Indeed there exist a large number of book-collecting dilettantes who are more interested in the bookplate and less in the book in which it is fixed.
The origins of the bookplate can be traced back to the 15th century and the artists who made them include Albrecht Durer and Hans Holbein. In Australia the most noteworthy bookplate designers include Norman Lindsay, Adrian Feint and G.D. Perrottet. Most significant state and national library collections include bookplate works. The Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery has a collection of bookplates as part of The Lionel Lindsay Gallery and Library Collection (Also known as the Bolton Collection) and in 2004 Patrick Corrigan AM gifted to the gallery a collection 318 bookplates, mostly by Australian artists, including John Shirlow, Lionel and Norman Lindsay, P. Neville Barnet, George Perrottet, Lloyd Rees, Pixie O Harris and Brett Whiteley.
“Bookplates Unbound” limited edition set (two views) Photos: Doug Spowart
Into this bookplate space a new and ambitious project is set to provide a contemporary view of the bookplate by Queensland artists. The project, entitled Bookplates Unbound, was inspired by conversations between artists Gael Phillips and Wim de Vos around the role of printmakers in the creation of fine art bookplates. The details of the Bookplates Unbound are as follows (from the frontpiece):
As the project evolved we decided to invite 29 other Queensland artists to collaborate in a project to make a limited edition folio of fine art bookplates mounted on sheets of art paper, unbound, in a clam shell box. The artists were also requested to supply an Artist’s Statement to accompany the prints. Any hand printmaking technique was allowed as well as digital prints. The size was restricted to no more than 90mm by 130mm and the bookplates were to be printed on acid free paper of a weight up to 100gsm. Since we are now in the 21’t century, digital prints were also allowed and, if submitted, these were to be printed using archival inks on acid free paper.
Some of the ‘Bookplates Unbound’ printing plates Photo:Doug Spowart
The Bookplates Unbound set of bookplates is a limited edition production with each artist receiving a copy. The remaining copies will be made available to collectors. The coordination of the project was undertaken by Gael Phillips and Wim de Vos at The Studio West End and was supported by Adele Outteridge.
‘Bookplates Unbound’ wall @ The Studio West End Photo: Doug Spowart
Anne Jolly, of Novel Lines Bookshop, launched the Bookplates Unbound set at a special event at The Studio West End on November 24. Accompanying the launch was an exhibition of artists books from friends of Studio West End that was opened by Helen Cole, Senior Librarian, State Library of Queensland. Wim de Vos also gave the audience a performance of two new tunnel books, one on Venice and the other referencng the Chrysler Building in New York that he has created [SEE the video in this post]. The openings concluded with a musical 6 song set by ‘Rock and Roll’ impresario Wim and fellow band members Neil Anderson and Robin Webb [SEE the video in this post].
Gael Phillips talks @ ‘Bookplates Unbound’ launch Photo: Doug Spowart
Wim and Gael thank Anne Jolly Photo: Doug Spowart
Helen Cole opens the Studio West End artists book show Photo: Doug Spowart
Helen Cole opens the Studio West End artists book show Photo: Doug Spowart
Studio West End artists book show Photo: Doug Spowart
Studio West End artists book show Photo: Doug Spowart
The Band – Wim, Robin Webb and Neil Anderson Photo: Doug Spowart
The contributing artists to the Bookplates Unbound and their respective print media are:
Janette Bailey Line etching / aquatint
Graham Bligh Linocut
Susan E Bowers Sugarlift etching and embossing
Victoria Cooper Digital print
Geraldine Connolly Soft ground etching
Philomena Drake Etching / aquatint
Malcolm Enright Digital print
Barbara Heath Digital print
Tabitha Ford Line etching
Lynne French Line etching and relief roll
Teresa Jordan Digitised linocut
Jeraldene Just Line etching
Sharon Lee Digital print
Chris Ling Line etching
James McDougall Photo etching
Julanne McDougall Photo etching
Fiona Medhurst Line etching and rubber stamp
Karla Meursing Linocut
Anita K Milroy Three hand pierced plates, line etching and embossing
Katharine Nix Lino etching
Adele Outteridge Line etching
Gael Phillips Line and photo etching on three plates
Pip Reid Line aquatint etching
Anneke Silver Engraved lino print
Doug Spowart Digital print
Stephen Spurrier Digital print
Madonna Staunton Wood cut and rubber stamps
Jonathan Tse Screen print
Geoff Thompson Line etching
Wim de Vos Line etching on four plates
Sheryl Whimp Open bite etching
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The Colophon for Bookplates Unbound
This Edition consists of forty copies, of which this is number 11
The bookplates were mounted on acid free cartridge paper and the cover titles embossed in “Times New Roman”. The font used for the Artists’ Statements was “Centaur”, designed by the late Bruce Rogers. The clam shell boxes were made by a craftsman bookbinder, Tony Gibaud at “Craftsmen Bookbinders”, Geebung, Queensland, who also made the blocks for the cover, spine and title page to a design by Gael Phillips and Wim de Vos. The text was printed by Drawing & Drafting Digital, Bowen Hills, Queensland.
The copyright of the bookplate images is retained by the individual artists.
ISBN: 978-0-646-59203-9
Published by Alumni Publishers
© 2012 Brisbane
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JOHN ELLIOTT’s ‘GIFTED COUNTRY’
An image of the ballad of country and western
As a photographer attempting to communicate personal experiences and my, at least I think, special view of life and the world, occasionally I have thoughts that if I wanted to connect en mass I should have been into music! When I look at what music does to I see participants who will slap, tap, hum, whistle, laugh, tear up and even cry. Music sure beats the visual arts hands down as a way of creating a connected audience response. But an exhibition of photographs at the Caboolture Regional Art Gallery, just a few kilometres north of Brisbane, may just win some points back for the visual artist.
Gifted Country is a photographic exhibition of the doyens of the world of country and western music by Toowoomba photographer John Elliott. As a follower of the music industry for over 30 years Elliott has amassed a collection of the latest top hits and the golden oldies. On the walls of the gallery the faces of C&W music stare out at the viewer — frozen and mute. Elliott has reduced them to an eye-only sensory experience. The only sounds permeating the space are the shuffle of footsteps of other gallery viewers and the muffled voices of local community members returning books to the library next door.
Casey Chambers + Jimmy Little
Before you get the feeling that the show is a little underwhelming there are other things to consider. Firstly the music and photography industry do share some similarities. Apart from practitioners at the most visible pinnacle of the discipline, those who make the sound and the image – the photographer behind the camera, the songwriter, the muso behind the lead singer and the mixer at the sound deck — are faceless. Only the products of their creative efforts are known to us. Okay, we can all recognise a Slim Dusty, Casey Chambers and Keith Urban from across the room. And that is perhaps because photographers like Elliott have made their image, apart from their music, famous. A reflective Jimmy Little leaning on a guitar neck (the one Little’s family selected as the ‘hero’ image for his recent funeral service), Lee Kernaghan stridently stands sky-pointing before a dramatic theatrically lit stage and a wide-eyed Chad Morgan’s face pokes out from his trade-mark safety-pinned hat. Once you’ve cherry-picked a few of the icons you are left with portraits of haggard faced, guitar holding middle-aged men, sweet smiling young girls and longhaired youths that crowd the rectangle photo frame.
What Elliott’s efforts bring to us is the human face of the extended country and western industry. These faces could be those of the waitress, the farm hand, the rodeo queen and the Big Mack truck mechanic. To help make the connection for the viewer Elliott pairs the portrait with the carefully chosen words of a biography that makes visible the musical provenance that we may share with the subject. Additionally a website links to interviews, commentaries and music to enliven the interest of those with a passion for C&W music.
What is remarkable is that over the years John Elliott has worked to amass this body of work. And this is not his sole interest — there are landscapes, urban vistas, other portraits and the personal and intimate moments of life. But this body of work has a quality and magnitude that sets it aside from the usual music documentary record.
This exhibition will be of great interest to the country and western dilettante, the music maker and the photographer alike. For this is a unique assemblage that is testimony to value of photography as record that is at once about history and the present — becoming history. The John Elliott Gifted Country performance will continue until June 23, and then, hopefully, will in the tradition of C&W — go on the road …
Doug Spowart May 26, 2012.
Also @ the Gifted Country show is a C&W PHOTO BOOTH – we had a bit of fun there …
CAMERA OBSCURA: QCCP
Later in our time in Queenstown we made another camera obscura at Jackie and Mike’s Queenstown Centre for Creative Photography. The room image featured a view up Late Wakatipu reflected in a mirror. The expanse of the glacial lake with the layered horizon of mountains seemed, for the moment, peaceful.
We sat in the background view—the picture in a ‘lensed’ camera view of the image within the room. The camera sits on a chair on the right-hand side of the image and its shadow falls into the bottom of the frame. We’ve posted a second image of this photo inverted so to external view can be more easily interpreted.
Camera Obscura: Queenstown Centre for Creative Photography
Cheers Doug and Vicky
QUEENSTOWN: Catching up with Jackie Ranken and Mike Langford
We recently visited two of the great luminaries of the Australian and New Zealand professional photography scene, Jackie Ranken and Mike Langford at their Queenstown Centre for Creative Photography. And as if the work these guys do is not amazing enough their home, in the QCCP has one of the world’s most magnificent views over the city of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and on to Walter Peak on one side and the Remarkables mountains on the other. It’s hard to engage in conversation with Jackie and Mike in daylight as every now and then your attention wanders to view outside — you need to excuse yourself, and grab a camera to capture the changing remarkable scenery out the window.
Between them Jackie and Mike have amassed a collection of AIPP APPAwards ‘glass eye’ trophies, NZIPP glass trophies and the AIPP New South Wales Awards antique cameras. It takes one large windowsill to show just some of the awards. Facing the lake and mountain view is a gallery of their stunning landscape and documentary works. The QCCP is an amazing and inspirational place to visit.
A selection of Professional Photographer of the Year trophies
After dinner we spent time talking about the issues of photography, great photographers past and present, and shared stories of places encounted and photographed. A data projector was positioned before a screen and we made presentations of recent works. One of Jackie’s projects, which we’d call ‘flying kitchenalia’, shows household items, mainly from the kitchen, being captured mid-air above various New Zealand picturesque locations. The incongruous pairing presented a completely different perspective in the photography of this already well-documented landscape. The absurd combinations in these images evoke a hilarious viewer response.
For some time the pair have travelled in Burma (sometimes called Miramar) and a presentation of Jackie’s documentary images of showed us that this is a most remarkable place for travellers, particularly those with a camera. While we recognized that Miramar is an amazing place, it is important to acknowledge Jackie’s skilled and astute photographic vision. In these images there was the poetry of a well-seen moment and yet a profound sense of place. Jackie captured poignant human moments where her subjects had unknowingly shared something special of themselves and their lives in this country. In turn this experience was shared with us. Jackie’s images are a remarkable document of a people and place that is about to change, and somehow, that’s exactly where photographers do their most profound work.
Mike’s images of Japan explored this familiar subject for him through an interesting concept of transitions referring to movie making techniques. Here Mike was looking at a more intimate and personal vision of this intriguing country. Our conversation continued well into the evening . . .
The next day was an early rise so we could catch our flight home. For breakfast Mike scrambled some eggs, toasted rustic bread and made coffee. Doug made a silhouette portrait of the pair before the picture window and then off to the airport — a bit rushed, but rich with the thoughts of the time spent together.
Jackie and Mike in silhouette
Thank you Jackie and Mike.
Doug and Vicky
SEE more about Mike and Jackie and the QCCP here:
PHOTOBOOK Workshop: Wanaka Autumn Art School
For the last 5 days we have been working with 13 participants in a Photobook workshop in Wanaka, New Zealand. The idea of the workshop was to enable the development of concepts and techniques for the presentation of personal photo-stories in the form of the self-published photobook. Two key aspects for the workshop were the photo-narrative and the form that a photobook can take beyond the traditional ‘pictures-in-a-book’ format.
The students were put through a steep learning curve engaging with the computer technology and software required, as many had never used Adobe Photoshop before. Sessions of intense computer activity were punctuated by practical book construction exercises.
Each student worked to develop a major personal book project during the workshop and, as tutors, we supported the conceptual and technical progress to make it happen.
Students @ our Photobook workshop – Wanaka Autumn Art School
They were an amazing bunch of people with varied interests and backgrounds. They all shared a great sense of humour and enthusiasm to get into the process of applying acquired knowledge—some doing ‘homework’ into the wee hours.
Coordinator of the Wanaka Autumn Art School is fabric artist (quilter), Robyn van Reenen who was supported by a motivated and energetic team including her husband Gilbert the photographer of Clean Green Images fame. Robyn and her team provided the tutors, many from Australia, with a great experience and opportunity to share their skills and knowledge with the participating students and artists.
We had a great learning experience as well and ended up probably as worn out as the students by the end of the workshop.
The group shot tells the story . . .
Worn out students and tutors @ Wanaka Autumn Art School
SEE a collaborative book that was made with contributions from the students;
http://www.cooperandspowart.com.au/2_PLACES/OtherBooks/WANAKA-Bk_PageFLIP/WANAKA_Flip.html
Cheers Doug + Vicky
wotwedid 