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IRIS AWARD WINNERS August 6, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : exhibition, IRIS Award, PCP , 2comments

Flavia Shuster, currently living in Argentina, won this year’s IRIS AWARD with a powerful, almost biblical portrait. But there were many other winners, including Melbourne’s Warwick Baker who is exhibiting concurrently with Todd Anderson-Kunert, Linsey Gosper and Michelle Tran in CHARMWOOD at the Perth Centre For Photography. Claire Martin announced the winners and Mark McPherson from the Hijacked Project accepted Flavia’s award on her behalf.

Composite by Bohdan Warchomij
Composite by Bohdan Warchomij

Anthony Riding Gallery July 4, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Anthony Riding Gallery, Art, exhibition , add a comment

The Anthony Riding Gallery, at the end of a cul-de-sac in Pearse St, North Fremantle, is Perth’s newest gallery space and a revelation.

Its  500sq  m of exhibition space houses the work of Justin Smith, New York based visual artist Christian de Vietri, photographer and filmmaker Jack Pam, and Tom Muller and Jean-Thomas Vannotti, who make up Maschi Fontana. Outside, there’s another 100sq  m of space for sculpture. All in all, it’s  a unique gallery aimed at showcasing world-class art, conceived and conceptualized and energized by Ben Riding and Andreia Anthony.

I first met Ben Riding when he was 19 and I was talked into documenting a multi-arts project in South Perth.

Then, the former Scotch College schoolboy co-curated Hotel 6151, a major multi-arts project that exposed the talents of more than 50 artists, theorists, performers, fashion designers, musicians and filmmakers. It was an incredibly exciting night,

Riding and his team turned a disused hotel in South Perth into an interactive art gallery and received international acclaim. And he’s doing it again. The Anthony Riding Gallery plans to offer an annual prize of between $10,000 and $20,000 to promising artists.

“We want to promote and nurture the visual arts with an emphasis on West Australian artists,” says Riding, who has completed artist residencies in London and Berlin.

There is the same excitement about this gallery that I felt when I documented Hotel 6151. The energy of Andreia Anthony and Ben Riding has changed the art scene and the art direction of Perth in a major way.

Ben Riding and Andreia Anthony Photo Bohdan Warchomij
Ben Riding and Andreia Anthony Photos Bohdan Warchomij

Anthony Riding Gallery
Anthony Riding Gallery

Anthony Riding Gallery
Anthony Riding Gallery

Anthony Riding Gallery
Anthony Riding Gallery

Australia’s Greatest Hits Joel Wynn Rees VENN GALLERY 16 Queen St Perth June 14, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : exhibition, Venn Gallery , add a comment

joel 450
Photo Joel Wynn Rees

JOEL WYNN REES
Australia’s Greatest Hits

16 June – 15 July 2011

Venn Gallery presents Australia’s Greatest Hits, a solo exhibition by Australian photographer Joel Wynn Rees containing a series of works taken on a recent journey through the North-West of the country.

Originally from Broome, Rees returned to re-connect with landscapes and people that continue to inspire his practice. The photographs explore representations of Australian identity and seek to uncover a unique vision of the characters and life found in the isolated terrain of the outback. The resulting artworks aim to provide an authentic account of their environs, whilst also probing often stereotypical concepts about the ‘Australian experience.’

Image: Joel Wynn Rees, Untitled 2010, photographic print, 100 x 100 cm
Courtesy of the artist

CHAOS, DESTRUCTION, FURNITURE AND FLORA May 16, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Eva Fernandez, exhibition, Fremantle Arts Centre , add a comment

EVA FERNANDEZ AT FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE

melaleuca preissiana IMAGE EVA FERNANDEZ
melaleuca preissiana IMAGE EVA FERNANDEZ

Saturday 21 May – Sunday 17 July 2011
Eva Fernandez is a well-known and respected photomedia artist, based in Perth. She has a Masters Degree of Creative Arts and is currently a PhD candidate at Edith Cowan University, Perth. Fernandez has exhibited in many exhibitions including Transient States at Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, Girls on Film and Mix Tape, both at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Fernandez has also recently curated me-take: Indigenous self-representation in Photomedia which will tour Australia in 2011.

Also on view:
Lily Hibberd: Benevolent Asylum
Hold Your Horses: The Soloists (a case study)
Nicola Kaye & Stephen Terry: …from a passenger list

Fremantle Arts Centre
1 Finnerty St, Fremantle
08 9432 9555
fac.org.au

REMIX: Art Gallery of Western Australia April 28, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Art Gallery of Western Australia, exhibition, Fine Art , add a comment

remix is an exciting exhibition that showcases the creativity of twenty contemporary Western Australian artists of diverse backgrounds, age and experience. The exhibition includes a broad mix of media with painting, sculpture, design, photography, textile and filmic work, most of it new or recently created and representing some of the most compelling examples of contemporary practice by Western Australian artists.

What was exciting for me in my visit to the Art Gallery was to see the work of  photographers that I have written about in Metaphor Online getting recognition and plaudits for their unique work.  Justin Spiers, Claire Martin, Yuha Tolonen, Graham Miller and Jacqueline Ball have substantial bodies of work in the Gallery.

Stars and Stripes Truck, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Photo Graham Miller
Stars and Stripes Truck, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Photo Graham Miller

Like the mixtape exhibitions in 2003 and 2006, remix brings together a diverse group of works that offer an opportunity to experience what some of Western Australia’s artists are doing in their practice. The works selected are not limited by a single theme but instead are orchestrated around approaches to making art, materiality or the experience of place.

The selected artists are; Daniel Argyle, Lydia Balbal, Jacqueline Ball, Helena Bogucki, Helen Britton, Paul Caporn, Jane Donlin, Tarryn Gill /Pilar Mata Dupont, Adam Goodrum, Jon Goulder, Thomas Jeppe, Laura Johnson, Siné MacPherson, Carlier Makigawa, Claire Martin, Graham Miller, Clare Peake, Justin Spiers, Juha Tolonen and Brendan Van Hek.

Tom Blake DARK SHAPES April 10, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Australian photographers, exhibition , 1 comment so far

I met Tom Blake on the media boat heading to Rottnest from Cottesloe Beach for the annual Rottnest Island Channel Swim. I’d got to the boat in relative comfort, on a rubber ducky and had managed to avoid getting my salt encrusted camera gear wet. Tom, with his scuba gear on and a wet suit, swam to the boat and was hauled on board. Impressive.

On Thursday, I went to his first solo exhibition dark shapes/miniature colours at Gallery 803 in the MKDC Building on the corner of Coolgardie Street and Wellington Street in West Perth.  An inaugural exhibition is a difficult act but Tom has curated and framed his own photos successfully. There are images from Tanzania, Kenya and Japan and elements from his inspirations in photography, and acknowledgements to Trent Park and Narelle Autio.

The exhibition runs for 10 days.

Tokyo Woman Tom Blake Photography
Tokyo Woman Tom Blake Photography

Under the Swim Tom Blake Photography
Under the Swim Tom Blake Photography

Pilbara Project April 10, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Art, Australian photographers, exhibition , add a comment

We need stories to match the size of the open pit mines, the length of the trains, the keels of the carriers.’
William L Fox, 2010

Tony Hewitt Photography
Tony Hewitt Photography

Christian Fletcher Photography
Christian Fletcher Photography

Tony Hewitt Photography
Tony Hewitt Photography

In February 2011 FORM  presented the first Pilbara Project exhibition. This exhibition opened on consecutive nights in both FORM Gallery in Perth and the Courthouse Gallery in Port Hedland, and features new photography and film by  artists Les Walkling, Tony Hewitt, Christian Fletcher, Michael Fletcher and Peter Eastway. Curated by William L. Fox, Director of the Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art, the exhibition considers the collision and interconnection between  land, industry and the cultures of the Pilbara.

The work depicts a set of visual narratives and individual stories from these creative minds, offering a new and different way of seeing and knowing this place. The exhibition considers industry, so crucial to this region, the state and nation, but also acknowledges that industry is just one layer within the complex strata of the Pilbara’s identity and history.

Have caught up with The Pilbara Project as it approaches the end of its run at FORM gallery in Murray Street Perth.  It comes down on the 29th April 2011 and is a must see collection of work from a group of well respected photographers  on the unique landscape of the Pilbara. The scale and the quality and  the creative insight behind the project will ensure this exhibition’s  impact on Australian photography.

Photographing the landscape as image, text or theatre removes it from its symbolic connection to the material earth. Landscape remains more than representation and the social practice that constructs it, although there are elements of that in this exhibition. The social relevance of landscape inevitably exceeds the purely visual and this collective ehibition has succeeded in travelling well beyond representation.

Image Les Walkling Copyright
September, 22 2010
Old Drive-In, South of Karratha
Les Walkling
Photography

CCP Documentary Award National Call for Entries March 18, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Australian photographers, CCP, Competitions, exhibition , add a comment

Tony Randall Vietnam veteran and security guard Photo Tom Williams
Tony Randall Vietnam veteran and security guard Photo Tom Williams

NATIONAL CALL FOR ENTRIES
CCP DOCUMENTARY
PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD

Documentary photographers, photojournalists and artists working in a documentary style are invited to submit their work for a chance to win the $4,000 Copyright Agency Limited Prize.

The eighth, biennial CCP Documentary Photography Award presents a survey of the best contemporary Australian documentary photography in series format. The Award is open to established and aspiring photographers using either analogue or digital cameras, however the content of the images must not be altered.

Approximately ten finalists will be selected for exhibition at Centre for Contemporary Photography from 28 October to 11 December 2011, and subsequent national tour until 2013. The winner of the $4,000 Copyright Agency Limited Prize will be announced at the opening of the exhibition at CCP on Thursday 27 October 2011.

The judges in 2011 are Dr Isobel Crombie, Senior Curator, Photography, National Gallery of Victoria;
Bill Henson
, Artist; and Naomi Cass, Director, CCP.

important dates

Entries Close Friday 20 May 2011
Exhibition Opening Thursday 27 October 2011, 6–8pm
Exhibition Dates 28 October to 11 December 2011

ENTRY FORMS

Entry forms can be downloaded from the CCP website now.
Go to http://www.ccp.org.au/documentary_award.php

Generously Supported by

CAL logo

Image: Tom Williams Tony ‘Fingers’ Randall, Vietnam war veteran and security guard 2007
Winner, seventh CCP Documentary Photography Award

Homo Plasticus: Philip Toledano Photos March 3, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : Art, exhibition, Fine Art , add a comment

Dina Photo Philip Toledano
Dina Photo Philip Toledano

The inventive and creative Philip Toledano came to my attention when he photographed his father in a lyrical yet heartbreakingly honest photographic style in the series Days with My Father . He  is also capable of creating staged and fantastical imagery, as with his Hope&Fear series. In many cases, he combines the two sensibilities. In A New Kind of Beauty, Toledano documents plastic surgery patients, drawing out both their ethereal qualities as well as their tragic humanity.

On his website he writes:

“I’m interested in what we define as beauty, when we choose to create it ourselves.

Beauty has always been a currency, and now that we finally have the technological means to mint our own, what choices do we make?

Is beauty informed by contemporary culture? By history? Or is it defined by the surgeon’s hand? Can we identify physical trends that vary from decade to decade, or is beauty timeless?

When we re-make ourselves, are we revealing our true character, or are we stripping away our very identity?

Perhaps we are creating a new kind of beauty. An amalgam of surgery, art, and popular culture? And if so, are the results the vanguard of human induced evolution?”

Toledano’s latest ofering now at Brooklyn’s Klompching Gallery is the A New Kind of Beauty. It will attract large audiences.
Toledano  stages his subjects coolly in  a classical large-format studio-style.

Angel by Philip Toledano
Angel by Philip Toledano

Portraits: Darren Clayton January 27, 2011

Posted by bohdan.warchomij in : exhibition, Portraiture , add a comment
A series of black and white photographs combining the relative safety of self-portraiture with the confronting examination of close up headshots, capturing details sometimes lost in the cautious distance of the camera.

In the space set up by the photographer, the subjects have sufficient distance between themselves and the camera to create a zone of reassurance – as in a normal portrait session.

Within this simple set up, the couples depicted take the photographs themselves, using a cable-release mechanism – they themselves choose the moment to trip the camera’s shutter. Distance can be a modifier in how we like ourselves to be seen by others, or how we think others see us.

In the same session, immediately following the self-portraits, these people and others were given the option of another portrait sitting, this time taken by the photographer. The distance was changed to a very confronting proximity, with two lights each side and a 6×6 medium format camera only 30cm away. This set up (using a close up filter) creates some distortion and intrudes into their personal space, with some sitters expressing slight tension. In contrast to the other portraits, these close-ups reveal how personal our own space can be.

Exhibiti0n at KURB Gallery William Street Perth Saturday 29 January 2011 to Friday 4 February 2011


Poster event@Kurb copy WEB