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15/6/2011

Five exhibitions

Centre for Contemporary Photography - CCP, Fitzroy

Without Words
Cate Consandine, Paul Knight, Ricky Maynard, Tom Nicholson, Mike Parr and Campbell Patterson
Curated by Kyla McFarlane
Gallery 3

Heightened emotion and empathy are responses often associated with documentary practice, through its historical connection to ‘lived reality’ and ‘event’. Still and moving images have documented protest, war, perpetrators and victims of crime and are often co-opted for political effect. Using this as a starting point, Without Words brings together photographic and video works from both art and documentary realms that engage with emotional affect, sincerity, passion and empathy. When art photography has abandoned its indexical relation to the real, how might it convey sorrow, humiliation, love or grief? Equally, can austerity be a powerful force in the historical record?

Presented in association with Melbourne Law School’s IILAH and APCML symposium, Affective States of International Criminal Justice, 20–22 July 2011 and supported by the Australian Research Council War Crimes Project.

CCP will host the closing panel of the symposium on Friday 22 July, with presentations by Kyla McFarlane and Tom Nicholson, chaired by Professor Gerry Simpson, Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law.

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Max Creasy
Reflections
Gallery 1

Max Creasy's carefully constructed photographs question our interpretation of photographic reality. The play between illusion and representation, between the facsimile and the real, invites doubt about the process of photography and the viewer's relationship to it.

The artist draws on different modes of representation including sculpture and painting, to question the authority of photography. His domestic still lifes are cast from plaster, hand painted – complete with shadows and highlights – before being photographed. This process interrupts our understanding of the role and effects of light in the photographic process.

These simulated objects – a rock, a highlighter, a yoghurt container – present themselves as a mixture of references to the artistic process, duplication, and illusion. Reinterpreted, they take on abstract qualities and become compelling arrangements of light and form.

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Australia Days
Brendan Lee
Gallery 2

Australia Days looks at the cyclic interpretations of Australian male culture.

The installation follows a similar template to the Queensland Pavilion from Expo '88 in Brisbane and looks at present day male culture through a series of video montages representing generalisations and observations of archetypal Australian attitudes.

The original display introduced visitors to a collection of stereotypical Aussie blokes, whereby mannequin, bush narrators – with talking television heads – humorously shared anecdotes about Australian life. The figures were both disturbing and satirical representations of Australian identity and were intended to contrast how the nation saw itself in the contemporary context of 1988.

The new installation, takes a stab at Australia's sense of nostalgia for bogan culture only to have it replaced by the moral panic regarding the hoon. Australia Days highlights the slippery premise of categorisation and shifts in cultural attitudes over the decades.

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Georgia Metaxas
The Mourners
Gallery 4

The Mourners is a series of portraits documenting the ritual of wearing black as a signifier of perpetual mourning. In remembrance of those they have lost, all that sit for a portrait in the series wear black everyday for the rest of their lives.

The controlled environment of a traveling studio replaces existing backdrops of nursing home corridors, living rooms and church halls. Stripped back to the point where only the faintest trace of the sitter's surroundings remain, the portrait brings the viewer to the periphery of an ultimately private space.

Deflecting the unflinching eye of the camera with an averted gaze, the women are absorbed by the void that is black, living mementos – vessels for mourning, fixed by a photograph, which in turn alludes to a double death.

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Night Projection Window
Anne Wilson
When I look outside the window my shoes creak

Last year, during an Australia Council residency in Liverpool, UK, I shot this footage of the Matthew Street Festival from the window of my apartment. Originally a celebration of music by The Beatles, the festival now celebrates tribute bands from the UK, it is now so popular there is a huge police presence to control the masses.

Through the lens of my camera I saw individuals blur into a singular mass as the sound of creaking floorboards under my feet caught my attention. In stark contrast to rhythmic bass sounds that filled my senses I suddenly became conscious of myself as an individual amidst the millions. Similarly, I engage with cultural discourse from nerve centres like Berlin and London from a distance. The work reflects this – a process of integrating contemporary influence from afar, in a context of 'home'.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory board, and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Opening Thursday 16 June 6–8pm

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George Street, Fitzroy, Vic 3065, Australia
Gallery Hours Wednesday to Friday 11am–6pm, Saturday and Sunday 12–5pm
Night Projection Window 7 nights after dark

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