calendario eventi  :: 

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8/2/2012

Four exhibitions

Centre for Contemporary Photography - CCP, Fitzroy

Yvonne Todd
Gallery 1 & 2

Curated by Serena Bentley, Wall of Seahorsel features one new and one recent series of work by New Zealand-based artist Yvonne Todd. The exhibition focuses and elaborates upon the more experimental strains of the photographer's practice.

Included in the exhibition is Todd's 2009 series The Wall of Man, comprised of twelve seemingly banal portraits of 'businessmen' (who are in fact amateur models that Todd recruited through advertising in local circulars). Her signature commercial photography techniques imbue the works with an insidious strangeness-sitters' eyes burn too bright and small faults like missing fingers become apparent.

This strangeness is taken to the extreme in Seahorsel, a new series of large-scale photographs. Seahorsel features costumed inhabitants of an invented community whose connectivity is suggested through a series of nonsensical dance moves. These 'illogical actions' convey an uneasiness more overt than that found in The Wall of Man, in turn making the comparative ordinariness of the senior male executives seem strange.

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Nicholas Mangan
Gallery 3

Nicholas Mangan's exhibition stems from his interest in the Walter Burley Griffin Pyrmont incinerator. Delving into records and archives Mangan discovered a complex history, from the debate for the location, to the elaborate design on its facade, the controversial demolition and, finally, to the fragments housed in the Powerhouse Museum.

A specific image of this site resonated with Mangan: the incinerator is pictured in ruin, the severe decay coupled with the decorative design is at odds with its location in inner Sydney. In the final days before being demolished "the Pyrmont incinerator's resemblance to a Mayan ruin was uncanny overgrown with tundra shrubs and trees, crumbling and covered in its own sacrificial soot and ash". The ornamental relief of the Pyrmont incinerator was in fact inspired by pre-Columbian architecture of Mesoamerica and specificly references the Mayan Palace of the Governor of Uxmal in Yucatan, Mexico according to some architectural historians.

Mangan's Some Kinds of Duration pays homage to the Pyrmont incinerator through the construction of a Canon NP6030 photocopier as an object in ruin. Cast in concrete, this particular model with its terrace stacking, geometric strata and elaborate abstract motifs, mimics both Mayan and art deco design.

In addition to revealing design and functional connections between these machines of industry, Mangan also presents a formal and temporal connection. The construction and demolition of the Pyrmont incinerator now exists primarily in the pages upon pages of photocopied archive material. Mangan draws this connection through carbon the incinerator destroying and reducing matter to carbon and a photocopier using carbon to reproduce and record.

Immediately recognisable, this vintage-model Canon machine - once a reliable source for shared information - is now redundant. This concrete photocopier ruin, with elegant design evident, stands alone as a mark of innovation and progression though it equally speaks of decay and historical record.

Like the few incinerator tiles that remain in the Powerhouse Museum, Mangan's installation utilises this institution to breathe new life into an abandoned object and, in doing so, ensures these histories are an ongoing conversation. Mangan's Some Kinds of Duration takes the viewer through a narrative of destruction, reproduction and preserved histories.

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Nat Thomas
Gallery 4

Yesterday's News is a project based on a personal audit of the media I consume and why I often make poor consumer choices. I try to be well informed, to read quality, well-researched, current journalism, but more often than not I find myself clicking on links leading to a gallery of Hollywood's shortest weddings, or cosmetic surgery procedures gone bad. It's a real dilemma. There are so many issues to be concerned by and connected with, and I'm a firm believer that our actions can make for change. But there's no denying the allure I feel toward the inner workings of the lives of people I will never know. It's surreal.

Yesterday's News addresses a media landscape in turmoil. This multi-disciplinary project engages with the battle between fact and fiction, our tabloid, celebrity gossip obsessions and 'real' current events news, for our attention.

The exhibition incorporates collage and home movies, blurring the boundaries between art and life. DVD footage shot from the collection of newspapers on microfilm at the State Library of Victoria contrasts with personal imagery and ideas surrounding the image-saturated landscape in which we now all live.

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Reko Rennie
Night Projection Window

An ongoing theme through my work is remembering - remembering the past to better understand the present and future. The Commonwealth Coat of Arms is a symbol that represents many manifestations of colonisation: theft, dislocation, dispossession and loss. In this video I have reclaimed the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, re-working a visual icon of Australian identity to include a representation of Aboriginal Australia. The work asks the viewer to 'remember' the true history of Australia.


Opening Thursday 9 February 6-8pm

Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George Street
Fitzroy, Vic 3065, Australia
wed-fri 11am-6pm sat-sun 12-5pm

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