Two exhibitions
dal 12/4/2011 al 13/5/2011
Segnalato da
12/4/2011
Two exhibitions
Stills Gallery, Sydney
Anne Ferran found herself imagining the encounters that might occur between races or species of birds that were new to one another. This led to a video work, Songbirds are Everywhere. Aaron Seeto is interested in the malleability of the narratives, which surround archive records - how images degrade, how stories are formed and privileged, how knowledge and history is written. In recent bodies of work exhibited here he has utlilised the daguerreotype.
Anne Ferran
Songbirds are Everywhere
Like many people Anne Ferran keeps a close eye on the birds around her - would give a lot to understand their social life but mostly it remains a mystery. She made a discovery last year that intensified this interest: the on-line existence of the paintings of the artists of the First Fleet, in the collection of the Natural History Museum in London. The First Fleet artists painted the birds they encountered on arrival and that shared their strange new world more often than any other subject.
The paintings are detailed and descriptive, full of character and individuality. Ferran found herself imagining the encounters that might occur between races or species of birds that were new to one another. This led to a video work, Songbirds are Everywhere, where brief encounters play out between small bird shapes based on the original paintings.
Most of the artists gave their painted subjects an English common name; some have persisted while others have fallen into disuse. Ferran’s regret for the loss of bird names like agile creeper, bold vulture, doubtful thrush, velvet-faced crow is real, but mild compared to the loss of the indigenous Eora names that at least one artist made a point of recording. Her photographs of small nets flung into the air preserve a few of these obsolete English names as titles.
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Aaron Seeto
Fortress
For the last decade Aaron Seeto has been interested in archives, in particular family photo albums and other photographic records. This interest is mostly based upon a desire to make visible the alternate historical positions and experiences of families such as his own Chinese-Australian one. He is interested in the malleability of the narratives, which surround archive records - how images degrade, how stories are formed and privileged, how knowledge and history is written. In recent bodies of work exhibited here Fortress and Oblivion, Seeto has utlilised the daguerreotype, one of the earliest and most primitive photographic techniques. Not only is the chemical process itself highly toxic and temperamental but the daguerreotype’s mirrored surface means the image appears as both positive and negative, depending on the angle of view. For Seeto, this mutability captures the essence of our experience of history and memory.
Image: Aaron Seeto, Fortress (Returning Finger #2), 2010 from Fortress. Daguerreotype 13 x 10cm, edition of 1 + 1AP
Stills Gallery
36 Gosbell Street . Paddington NSW 2021 Sydney
Opening hours: Tues-Sat 11am-6pm