New North Photography Prize

The New North Prize for Photography is announced tomorrow night at the New North Gallery at 15A Railway Place, Fairfield. This is the second year of the prize, which has three categories: open, student and portrait. The winner of the open category gets to stage an exhibition at New North next year, with $2500 worth of printing included. Entries were received from a broad range of photographers and there are some great pictures on show. Be at New North at 6pm to hear the announcement.

Alfred Gregory at Source Photographica

From Everest to Blackpool, by Alfred Gregory
Exhibition: 8th - 29th October 2010
Tuesday - Sunday 11am – 5pm
Source Photographica
1A Rose St, Brighton VIC 3186
T:03 05306059

On June 2nd, 1953 the world heard that the peak of Mt Everest had finally been reached. It was a British - led team that made it to the summit of the world's highest mountain, and images of the triumphant Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were flashed around the world.

Those pictures were taken by Alfred ‘Greg’ Gregory, the expedition's official stills photographer, and constitute part of a an exhibition of his work at Source Photographica until 29 October 2010. The show contains many images held in the MGA collection

GREGORY, Alfred Everest First Ascent 1953: Tom Stobart, 2005.
Gelatin Silver Photograph. Monash Gallery of Art, City of Monash Collection

Hijacked Artists featured online

Flak Photo is a daily photography website that celebrates the art & culture of photography online. It's all about discovering and promoting photographers from around the world. Published six days a week by one-man-band Andy Adams in his "spare time" no less.

While they've just finished featuring works by 20 of the photographers from Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany each weekday for the last month, that's not the only reason to check them out.

They also accept submissions to be featured on the site - so to those photographers out there looking for some international exposure, this might be your opportunity.

- Stephanie

Li Gang's artist talk today

Exhibiting artist Li Gang and exhibition curator Tony Trembath both joined us this morning to discuss their exhibition Li Gang: in the grey scale (on display until 28 November 2010).

We recorded the talk and hope to have it up on our website later today for those of you who couldn't make it along.

- Stephanie

Lee Grant wins the 2010 Bowness Photography Prize

Canberra photographer Lee Grant has won this year's prestigious $25 000 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize at Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne.

Lee Grant's family portrait Mary with her daughters Aja and Adau, and her granddaughter Nankir is a formal portrait of a Sudanese migrant family set in their home in Canberra.

Established in 2006 to promote excellence in photography, the annual non-acquisitive William & Winifred Bowness Photography Prize is an initative of the MGA Foundation. It has quickly become Australia's most important photogaphy prize.

Works by Philip Quirk, Clare Rae and Darren Sylvester received Adobe Honourable Mentions

34 artists have been shortlisted as finalists in the 2010 prize. All 34 works are on display in the exhibition (see them online here).

Get involved by voting in the People's Choice award, with $1000 going to the winning artist and four Crumpler Camera bags up for grabs for the voter.

For more information on this year's prize as well as it's history check out MGA's website

2010 Bowness Photography Prize judging in progress...

The 2010 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize is being judged today. Curator Gael Newton, photographer Max Pam and MGA Director Shaune Lakin have been deliberating over the winner of $25 000 for the last 5 hours!

Announcement of the winner and three Adobe Honourable Mentions will take place at MGA tomorrow night at 7.30pm. Also voting will open tomorrow for the Crumpler People's Choice Award. Voters go into the draw to win three Crumpler Camera Bags and the winning artist walks away with $1 000 thanks to the MGA Foundation.

-Katie

CCP Lecture Series, Wed 15 September 2010

Dr Penny Edmonds, historian at The University of Melbourne and Dr Jane Lyndon, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University will be discussing issues of Indigenous sovereignty and rights through colonial photography and performances in a free lecture at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, 404 George Street Fitzroy, tomorrow night, Wednesday 15 September 6.15pm.

For more information contact CCP on 9417 1549 or info@ccp.org.au

Amanda Thornton

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

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