Posts Tagged ‘Victoria Cooper’
14 December: Dining lunch @ the Niagara Cafe Gundagai
Stepping back to the 1950s and 60s – Dining in a cafe with cubicles and the locals.
The phrase ‘when I was young’ is so cliché and yet as one grows older fragments of past memories emerge from everyday experience. The fragments trigger memories of simpler – less complex times and simple pleasures.
The town of Gundagai is part way along the Hume highway between Sydney and Albury. We stopped in town looking for a place to get some lunch – a takeaway maybe, the simple staple of the Australian traveller – a meat pie, tomato sauce and a can of Coke. Bakeries in the town looked closed, swish fine dining cafes looked too predictably up-market.Mid way along the main street was situated the quaint facade of curved glass, tiled step and menu taped to the window of the Niagara Cafe. We walked in to a 1950s bench-styed dark stained seating area. At each table salt and pepper shakers sat astride red-capped dark sauce bottles and a menu. The table tops were a pea green and walls covered in newspaper reports, horse racing photo finish pictures, paired Australian and Greek flags, annotated photos and other ephemera.We checked out the menu ….
Here are a few images – SEE THE BEHANCE FOLIO – Click Here
The front door of the Niagara Cafe
A couple of patrons
13 December: James Turrell – Skyspace ‘Within without’
On three occasions we have visited the Turrell Skyspace artwork @ the National Gallery of Australia during our time in Canberra. Turrell states that:
My work is about space and the light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space and plumb it with vision. It is about your seeing, like the wordless thought that comes from looking into fire.
For us the Skyspace was like visiting a physical and visual phenomenon. The images that follow record our experience of the artwork – and some of the fun.
An external view of the Skyspace installation
Inside the Skyspace installation – standing before the stupa
Vicky looking up towards the sky opening
4 views of the Skyspace opening
Sitting in the sun spot – two separate views
A wedding photographed in Skyspace
Vicky photographs fellow visitor
Sun circle projection
Inside Turrell’s Skyspace with friends doing selfies
The two of us before the stupa at the end of our visit
A wedding photographed in Skyspace
12 December: Meetings – John Reid + Maurice O’Riordan
Vicky meets with external supervisor John Reid in our accommodations in the artists’ flat at the Australian National University’s Art School. Their meeting strategised the final refinement and structure of her PhD exegesis.
Doug meets with the editor of Art Monthly Australia Maurice O’Riordan. The office for AMA is situated in the garrett-like clocktower of the School of Art @ the Australian National University. Access is gained by climbing a narrow set of stairs that seem as if they are piled upon the boxes of past issues. My interest in meeting with Mauice is that AMA has just published my review of the 2011 Olive Cotton Photographic Award. SEE Current Issue
The stairs to the AMA office
Maurice with the latest issue of AMA
Maurice and I spoke about different aspects of the critical review of art and artists in Australia, the problems of the regional artist, the important role that journals such as AMA play in the discussion about art and practice, changes in photography as art over the last 20 years and the demise of Photofile.
Photos and words: Doug
11 December: Visiting the National Gallery of Australia
Visiting the National Gallery for the first time in 14 months gave an opportunity to see the new Entrance and Foyer as well as, in another post – the James Turrell ‘Within without’ work.
The new extensions add a new box to the front of the building certainly provides an entrance way to the building that adds impact to the visitor’s first encounter with the space. Gone is the revolving door and the feeling of coming in a side entrance. Gallery staff welcome you and direct you to get your tickets for the Renaissance show, or to drop your excess gear at the cloakroom or see arty stuff in the bookshop.
As if to be uplifted to the space where the art is an escalator beckons, when we were there it squeaked disconcertedly, and gradually your anticipation for being drawn into art Nirvana is met by …
THE LIFT LOBBY!! A side-step to the right placed us on track to the exhibition galleries – It is as if the floor plan needed to be shifted 4 metres for the two buildings to line up.
Anyway there were some great shows and art to see and some favourite artworks to re-connect with.
In the PHOTOSPACE Gallery area the exhibition Upstairs downstairs: Photographs of Britain 1874-1990 presented a selection of classic documentary works from familiar names including Julia Margaret Cameron, John Thomson, Cecil Beaton, Felix H. Man, Humphrey Spender, Edith Tudor Hart, Bill Brandt, Grace Robertson, Bert Hardy, David Moore, David Potts, Roger Mayne, Lewis Morley, Chris Killip, Martin Parr and Nick Waplington.
Photography has long served the rich, the famous and the infamous. It has also had many practitioners who have championed the lives of those whose names history has never known. The social documentary tradition, focusing on the lives of ordinary people – usually those powerless to tell their story – has been a driving force in British photography. This is hardly a surprise in a society traditionally marked by class divisions and prejudices. (From the exhibition blurb)
This little gallery space in what was once the bookshop houses the NGA’s photography exhibition presence and while other media ancient and new get large prominent acreage this what we, as the photography interested public, have for the moment as an exhibition space.
Later we visited the big ‘blockbuster’ Renaissance show and, as part of any NGA visit, the Members Lounge to sit and ponder the art seen and experienced over a coffee and friand.
One other new building activity underway at the National Gallery is a bird busily making a nest home in Neil Dawson’s suspended orb sculpture ‘Diamonds’. Interesting …
Neil Dawson’s ‘Diamonds’
10 December: Canberra – Small World
A rainy day in Canberra visiting Old Parliament House
Old Parliament House now contains the Museum of Australian Democracy – but apart from an exhibition of Australia’s best cartoons for 2011 what interested me was the history of the building located within an architectural model of the building. Here I found the ‘small world’ of Canberra.
Model of the Old Parliament House 1988
CANBERRA SMALL WORLD
A group photo
The photographer @ work
I wonder what this poor lonely soul is thinking?
.
.Concept an photos by Doug
9 December: Summer Travels
On the road to Canberra
This series of Blog posts presents a selection of WOTWEDID over a 5 day period at the beginning of our 2011 Summer Travels.
.
10 December: Arriving in Canberra
.
Our artist friend Liz Coates took us to an exhibition opening @ the M16 Gallery. Entitled TIMESCAPE the exhibition consisted of works by Julie Brooke, Ella Whateley & Vanessa Barbay (All visual arts PhD students from the Australian National University)
M16 Panorama : Exhibition "TIMESCAPE"
The exhibition was opened by Ruth Waller, Head of Painting @ ANU School of Art. Waller spoke of the challenge of the visual arts PhD and the special nature of the knowledge that artists have that is tuned and refined in the process of research and study.
Ruth Waller, Vicky and Liz Coates
The work on show is a testimony to the work of the artist as academic researcher. The artists’ state that the work is “An exploration of how experiences of the complex and multi-dimensional qualities of time and space may be embodied in the material process of painting.”
SEE website for details http://m16artspace.com.au/?p=635
Pictures @ an exhibition
SEE A folio pictures made @ the exhibition opening http://www.behance.net/gallery/Pictures-an-exhibition/2669661
.
.
26 November: Robyn Stacey “House to House” @ Jan Manton Art, Brisbane
This afternoon we attended the opening and book launch of Robyn Stacey’s latest project “House to House” at Jan Manton Art in Brisbane.
http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/exhibitions/2011/index.php?obj_id=stacey
Jan Manton introduces Dr Amanda Bell who opened the exhibition
The work on show at Jan Manton Art is but a small selection of a larger body of work that was on show earlier this year at Stills Gallery in Sydney. This was a great selection from the larger show and included the book launch of a considerable volume on the historic house project. Working to extend the perception of the curatorial selection and exhibition, Stacey has embedded narrative and playful sense of discovery in the images she created of these objects.
Victoria Cooper
Stills Gallery show: Tall Tales and True
http://www.stillsgallery.com.au/exhibitions/2011/index.php?obj_id=2011_05&nav=4
A comment by Doug Spowart
A veteran of museum and archive still life subject matter Robyn Stacey presents at this showing, 6 large-scale colour photographs. The photographs deserve and reward intense observation as each image is akin to peering through a magnifying glass where finite detail is revealed as the eye moves across the plane of view. Most photographs blend artefacts form the historical houses alongside the contemporary living subjects, usually of flora, fruit and nuts.
The images exist as tantalizing trompe-l’œil. The viewer is drawn through the photographic surface by the artist’s careful compositional placement of subject, the descriptive lighting employed, and the now uncommon experience of large format camera sharpness. Here the original visual experience of the texture, depth and space of what was carefully placed before the camera is reconstituted on the gallery wall.
Today, as growing response to the immediate digital snapshot, a movement called ‘slow photography’ is emerging taking its lead from the ‘slow’ food movement) These photographs, made as planned, considered, composed, placed, illuminated and imaged are perhaps the epitomy of the movement. David Hockney once proposed that the more time the artist takes making an artwork the more the viewer will get out of it. Robyn Stacey’s work is made with time and therefore will reward even the most intense, continued and considered observation.
Robyn and Vicky talk about the work
Photos: Doug
26 November: The last student @ the State Library of Qld
The academic year is nearly over and students don’t need to be at the State Library of Queensland researching and studying – the place is empty, no-one is in the stacks. But then again – look closely …
.
.
.
The dedicated student still at work!!
12 November: Sandy Barrie Presentation & Ruby’s 83rd Birthday
Earlier posts describe the plight of Ipswich flood survivor Sandy Barrie. Today we reinstated his AIPP Honorary Life Membership Certificate and Ribbon both of which were lost in the flood. The occasion was shared with Ruby Spowart who celebrated her 83rd Birthday party with family.
Sandy Barrie with Ruby Spowart
Sandy was appreciative of the efforts made to get the award reissued by Queensland Divisional President Jan Ramsay. The event was witnessed by a deputation consisting of three AIPP Honorary Fellows.
Ruby + Annie about to blow out the candles
Best wishes to both Ruby and Sandy.
Cheers Doug and Vicky
29 October: Hannah Roche “Unknown Pleasures” exhibition opening
I attended Hannah’s photographic exhibition opening on the 29th.
Hannah Roche @ her exhibition
“Unknown Pleasures”
Curator Daniel Elborne, Saturday, October 29 · 6:00pm – 9:00pm
RAYGUN GALLERY, 29 Annand Street, Toowoomba
.
The images of Hannah Roche are poetic quotations – some enigmatic – some idiosyncratic while others are romantic – des souvenirs de voyages. This show, curated by Daniel Elborne, contained images that were chosen to evoke in the viewer the uncanny within the mundane moments of daily life and to “establish meaning in the hiddenness of the everyday world”.[1]
These images come from a much larger body of experimental work by Hannah as she explores the medium of photography in its contemporary manifestations. Photography has always had an identity crisis as a representational medium and a carrier of messages. This critique has only intensified in the digital medium where the photograph refers to itself and its history and is no longer object but concept. This current condition of the photograph appears not to reduce its possibilities, but rather, for Hannah and other contemporary photographers, it opens up a vast new visual language.
Victoria Cooper (words + images)
[1] From the catalogue for the show, Unknown Pleasures, see http://raygunlab.com/2011/10/25/unknown-pleasures-opens-saturday-one-night-only/
wotwedid 