Conference: Art History’s History in Australia and New Zealand

This coming Sunday one of the 2009 Bowness Prize judges Helen Ennis is presenting a paper at:

Conference: Art History’s History in Australia and New Zealand
Saturday 28th August and Sunday 29th August
Venue: Elisabeth Murdoch lecture theatre, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne, Parkville.
This is a free public event, and registration for attendance is not required.
Enquires: Professor Jaynie Anderson, t: (+61 3) 8344 5514 and Dr Meaghan Wilson-Anastasios mewi@unimelb.edu.au

Sunday 29th August 2010
11:30 – 12:00
Helen Ennis
Associate Head, Undergraduate
Associate Professor, Art Theory Workshop, ANU School of Art

‘Other histories: photography and Australia’
Photography has its own histories, which were begun relatively late. The first, Jack Cato’s The Story of the Camera in Australia was published more than 110 years after photography began to be used in the colonies. Histories of Australian photography are still few in number, amounting to a total of four (Cato; Gael Newton; Anne-Marie Willis and Helen Ennis). Photography has another doubled history relating to its inclusion in broader histories of Australian art (Christopher Allen, Art in Australia, 1997; Andrew Sayers, Australian Art, 2001; John McDonald, Art of Australia, 2008). This phenomenon too is recent. As a medium and as a set of practices photography has presented various difficulties to art historians. In this paper I will consider some of these and argue for new ways of thinking about photography and history.

Amanda Thornton

ARMCHAIR GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY ABORIGINAL ART

Don't miss our last session of this popular series
7.00pm Thursday 2 September 2010
Bookings Essential 03 8544 0500

Fresh from the festivals: Susan McCulloch

Between sessions three and four Susan and Emily will visit the long running National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards in Darwin and the Cairns Indigenous Art Fair. They will return to report on the latest in contemporary work and provide an insight into the industry that supports and surrounds contemporary Aboriginal art, from art centres to commercial dealers.

Presented by renowned writers and publishers Susan McCulloch & Emily McCulloch Childs, will provide an in-depth and insightful introduction to contemporary Aboriginal art for the beginner, enthusiast and collector.

$35 General public
$30 Friends of MGA

The best-selling book McCulloch's Contemporary Aboriginal Art: the complete guide is available to purchase for $49.95rrp from shop@mga, Friends of MGA receive 10% discount in the shop.

DIGITAL PRINTING MASTERCLASS

DIGITAL PRINTING MASTERCLASS - BOOK NOW TO SECURE A PLACE
There are still a some places available for this unique masterclass. Working behind the scenes of Australia's leading fine art photographic lab you will see what goes into making truly stunning digital prints using both photographic and inkjet printing processes.

Workshop Details
Date: Saturday 28th August, 2010
Time: 10.00 am to 4.00 pm
Location: Colour Factory, 409-429 Gore Street, Fitzroy VIC, 3065.
Melways Map Ref 44 G5 or View in Google Maps
Price $175.00 (inc GST)

Call Linsey at the Colour Factory on (03) 9419 8756 to make your booking by phone

Workshop Overview
‘Digital Printing Masterclass’ is a hands-on printing workshop that reveals how to get the very best results in digital printing using the latest pigment ink jet or photographic (C Type) printing technology.

The workshop leader Tim Handfield and the workshop participants will review a selection of images and jointly make decisions about how they are to be printed. Tim will demonstrate how those aesthetic decisions can be carried out using RAW processing software and advanced Photoshop techniques.

Through the day the selected images will progress from: on screen representation, to print tests and through to finished exhibition prints. All steps will be demonstrated, explained and discussed with the workshop participants. Participants will then have the opportunity to view and critique the finished prints, and discuss how they might apply the day’s insights in their own work.

Who Should Attend?
'Digital Printing Masterclass' is equally relevant for photographers who produce their own prints, or those who prefer to work with technical professionals, such as the Colour Factory staff, to produce prints for them. The content of the workshop is as much about the conceptual and aesthetic aspects of digital printing as it is about the technical.

About Tim Handfield
Tim is a fine art photographer of thirty years experience, with nineteen years in digital photography. He has many years of experience in both analogue and digital printing as the founder of The Colour Factory, which he managed from 1980 to 1992.
In these digital photography workshops, Tim draws on his experience to enable participants to gain new insights and develop their skills in digital photography and image processing to produce superb print ready files.
Tim’s work has been exhibited widely and is represented in many public and private collections, including:
:: National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
:: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, VIC
:: Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, CA
:: Australian Parliament House Collection, Canberra ACT
:: Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Horsham, VIC
:: Artbank, Sydney, NSW

Image: Tim Handfield - Untitled, Abbotsford, 2007
Type C Print, 126 cm x 160 cm

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE RETURN OF THE DEAD

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE RETURN OF THE DEAD
3.00pm Saturday 14 August 2010 FREE EVENT
Bookings preferred mga@monash.vic.gov.au or call 03 8544 0500

Join prominent photographic artists ANNE FERRAN and ROD McNICOL and well-known curator and writer HELEN ENNIS as they discuss photography's ability to keep the past alive.

Contemporary culture is obsessed with keeping the dead alive. While vampires and zombies were once the mainstay of horror films and literature, the success of Buffy and more recently the Twilight saga suggest our collective fascination with the undead has reached phenomenal proportions.

Photography is also preoccupied with the undead: it keeps the past alive, in the form of a magical, silvery image. As part of its latest exhibition Living deadly: haunted surfaces and contemporary art, MGA is hosting a panel discussion on photography’s ability to keep the past alive.

image: Rod McNICOL Untitled 1–20 from the series Memento mori 2002–3
20 pigment ink-jet prints on cotton paper 2010
courtesy of the artist and Place Gallery, Melbourne

Barbara Oehring wins Most Dramatic Image

MGA Friend Barbara Oehring took out the LEXAR MOST DRAMATIC IMAGE prize at CCP 2010 Kodak Salon for her photograph Sleep in Fright. Barbara wins a Sony DCR SX40Silver Handycam & Lexar Card Pack $1427. Check out the show until 25 September 2010

John Gollings doco takes out National Media Award

Sally Ingleton's documentary JOHN GOLLINGS: EYE FOR ARCHITECTURE has won the Bates Smart National Media Award, Australia's most prestigious media award for journalists, editors, producers and others reporting on architecture and design.

Ingleton's remarkable documentary documents Gollings' distinguished career and provides an insight into the volatile lives of people who make architecture.

John Gollings’series of photographs from the highlands of Papua New Guinea is currently on display as part of MGA’s Living deadly exhibition until 19 September.

Nan Goldin at Heide

Heide's current exhibition Up close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang argues that photography offers a means to engage with and give a picture to "subculture". In this way, the exhibition signposts the political and ethnographic preoccupations of certain photographers of the 1960s-80s.

Aside from the excellent survey of Jerrem's work, the exhibition provides a great opportunity to see Goldin's keystone work The ballad of sexual dependency. Goldin first began showing this slide show with soundtrack to friends - invariably the subject of the photographs - at venues around New York City in the late 1970s. At Heide, it is seen in extended and somewhat updated form. The slide show runs for over an hour and has to be viewed in full. Even if not you're enamoured with Goldin's refusal of technical virtuosity, it's impossible not to be affected by the work's melancholia and intimacy.

Jerrems at MGA and Heide

There are two great opportunities in Melbourne at the moment to consider the significant legacy of one of the city's most important photographers Carol Jerrems (1949-80). A large survey of Jerrems' photographs opened yesterday at Heide Museum of Modern Art. Up close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang draws on a range of public and private collections to build a convincing picture of Jerrems as a great photographer whose work engaged keenly with the politics and style of Melbourne's avant-garde during the 1970s. MGA is showing a series of pictures made recently by Lyndal Walker and Concettina Inserra that draw on the legacy of Jerrems, Taking pictures some time later.

The series presents portraits of Walker and Inserra's milieu, each holding a print of their earlier photograph "Pole Street" (2000), which restages Jerrems' most famous picture "Vale Street" (1975). Also included is a 1976 photograph of Jerrems' friend Juliet holding a print of "Vale Street", itself the point of origin for Walker and Inserra's recent series. We get a clear sense of the influence of Jerrems for later generations of artists. Lyndal and Tina's photographs also suggest that the gender and sexual politics indicated in Jerrems' work, with the hopes it placed in cultural practice as a driver for social reform, remains a work in progress.

Shaune

Bill Henson lectures

Today's Sunday Age has a report on eminent artist Bill Henson's lecture to be delivered tomorrow (Monday 2 August) at BMW Edge, Federation Square. The article suggests this is Bill's first public talk since the controversy over his work two years ago. That's not quite true: Bill spoke at MGA on 29 September last year, when he answered questions from the crowd, some of which touched on the controversy. Bill will again speak to MGA visitors on 12 August.

Shaune