Centre for Contemporary Photography
'Photo-Synthesis: Explorations into Contemporary Photomedia' is a series of monthly lectures and panel discussions at CCP between June and October 2002. This year the series aims to establish a 'synthesis' between theory and practice, making connections with current developments in photographic and curatorial practice. June 26 Photography and the Collection (Panel).
Explorations into Contemporary Photomedia
'Photo-Synthesis: Explorations into Contemporary Photomedia' is a
series of monthly lectures and panel discussions at CCP between June
and October 2002. This year the series aims to establish a
'synthesis' between theory and practice, making connections with
current developments in photographic and curatorial practice. The
series commences with a panel on the collecting practices of our
public institutions, and features solo lectures by Alasdair Foster
(Australian Centre for Photography), Rhana Devenport (Asia-Pacific
Triennial) and Charles Green (University of Melbourne), as well as a
special panel on digital art practice.
June 26 Photography and the Collection
Isobel Crombie, Michael Galimany, Kelly Gellatly & Jane Scott
Chaired by Clare Williamson
How do photographs come to be in public institutions? Who chooses
which images to buy and on what grounds? This forum will explore the
policies and attitudes that inform the various collecting practices
of Melbourne's premier photographic institutions. Isobel Crombie,
Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Victoria,
will speak about the process of collecting in an art photography
department; Michael Galimany, a Curator in the La Trobe Picture
Collection, will describe the way the State Library of Victoria
collects photographs; Kelly Gellatly, Curator at Heide Museum of
Modern Art and former curator of photography at the National Gallery
of Australia, will draw on her various experiences; and Jane Scott,
Director of Monash Gallery of Art, will discuss her organisation's
large collection of photography. The session will be chaired by Clare
Williamson, Exhibitions Curator at the State Library of Victoria and
CCP Board Member, who has also worked with photography at the
Queensland Art Gallery and at ACCA. This session will be of interest
to artists working with photography, collectors, critics and anyone
with a passion for photography.
__________
July 24 Rhana Devenport Reflections on Contemporary Asia Pacific
Photography: the Image, the Performative and the Cinematic
Contemporary art from Asia and the Pacific is among the most exciting
and dynamic in the world today. In this presentation, Rhana Devenport
will discuss contemporary photo-based art from the region, with a
focus on the forthcoming Asia-Pacific Triennial. APT 2002 features a
group of artists from a rich field in which the photographic and the
moving image are considered. This Triennial draws out particular
inflections in the practice of a set of important artists, and
consciously explores cinematic, performative and spatial concerns
through engaging the sensual impulse in highly individuated ways.
Shifts in video and filmic languages are registered in this
exhibition which includes still photography as both documentation and
experimentation as well as actions and gestures captured through
static, moving and sequential images.
Rhana Devenport is Senior Project Officer, Asia-Pacific Triennial at
Queensland Art Gallery. She has been involved with the Triennial
project since its inception in 1993, spanning curatorial
participation, publishing, promotion and public programming. She is a
frequent contributor to art journals and serves on advisory
committees for Asialink (Melbourne), Object (Sydney) and the Asian
Art Archive (Hong Kong).
___________
August 21 Alasdair Foster Art Without the Artist?
In this provocative presentation, Alasdair Foster explores the use of
art and looks to a near future when art may no longer rely upon or
privilege the artist-producer. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines
including neurophysiology, economics, art history, behavioural
science and consilience theory, Foster offers what he calls "a
polemic refracted in a crystal ball".
Alasdair Foster is the Director of the Australian Centre for
Photography in Sydney. With a hybrid education in physics,
photography, history and theatre, his career has spanned the film
industry, commercial and art photographic practice, curation and
writing. Before moving to Australia, he was the founding director of
Fotofeis, the award-winning biennial of international photography in
Scotland.
___________
September 18 Picturing the Digital
Alessio Cavallaro, Linda Erceg & Keely Macarow
Chaired by Daniel Palmer
What has become of the image in the digital age? How are digital
technologies - the metamedia tool of the computer - continuing to
influence the practice of image making? What is 'digital art', when a
majority of contemporary art and photomedia passes through a digital
phase at some point in its production? This panel session considers
this theme in relation to contemporary art practice and exhibition.
Alessio Cavallaro, Producer/Curator of New Media Projects at the
Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, will
consider the role of this new institution and its dialogue with
contemporary art practice; digital media artist Linda Erceg will
discuss the trajectory of her art practice from analogue photography
to digital installations; Keely Macarow, curator, writer, media arts
producer and lecturer in the Media Arts department at RMIT
University, will discuss her mediating role between contemporary art
and digital technologies. The session will be chaired by CCP's
digital art curator, Daniel Palmer, and will be of particular
interest to artists working between photography and new media.
___________
October 23 Charles Green Atlas: Images versus Language
Charles Green begins this lecture with Terry Smith's question: What
has been the fate of the image in modernity? Arguing that a range of
influential contemporary theorists respond overwhelmingly with a
farewell, in the now familiar vocabulary of simulacra, the return of
the real, and the depletion of an image's auratic presence, Green
agrees that this 'image crisis' is best observed in photography and
on the screen. However, the much-vaunted interdisciplinarity of
critical theory turned out to be almost entirely one-way, commencing
with the seismic 1980s importation of theory into art practice, art
theorists today propose different viewpoints - that artists can
produce new knowledge through images, and at the same time that
images must not be reduced to writing. Other theorists argue that we
are on the verge of a new understanding of visuality propelled by new
media. Weighing up approaches to the image and finding them wanting,
Green speculates as to how and why recent international art has
arrived at a conception of itself that is different from both
pre-modern art and postmodernism.
Dr Charles Green is a senior lecturer in the School of Fine Arts,
Classics and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, and Adjunct
Senior Curator 20th-21st Century Art, National Gallery of Victoria.
He is also an artist, working collaboratively with Lyndell Brown
since 1989. A regular contributor of articles and reviews to
Australian and international art journals, notably Artforum, his book
publications include Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art
1970-94 (Craftsman House, 1995) and The Third Hand: Artist
Collaborations from Modernism to Conceptualism (University of
Minnesota Press, 2001). He is currently working on a major history of
Australian art after 1968.
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All lectures Wednesday nights at at CCP, 6.30pm
Single Tickets $7 full / $5 conc (inc GST)
Season Pass $25 full / $18 conc (inc GST)
Seats are limited, so book early to avoid disappointment.
To order a Season Pass, providing discounted admission
to lecture sessions, by mail
Centre for Contemporary Photography
205 Johnston St
Fitzroy Vic 3065
+613-9417-1549
+613-9417-1605