Popped into the Australian Centre for Photography yesterday afternoon
for a floor talk by two of the artists, Michelle Lord (all the way from
Birmingham, UK) and Nairn Scott (all the way from College of Fine Arts
up the street) in the current exhibition....
http://tmp.acp.org.au/current/index.php#the_lake
Nairn gilds paper with gold and then inkjet prints B&W photos of gold
objects. The premise is, good ol' RGB cannot replicate metallic surfaces
well, let alone be an art object with inherent material value, like
marble, or gold. The photographs are of variously valuable and ephemeral
objects. And the prints were arranged in a very rigid grid, with no
order in the value of the subjects.
Michelle builds scale models of imaginary antiquity ruins, and
photographs them with a little photo-cut out of a Roman Tribune. They
are an illustration of a Borges short story of a man searching for the
river of immortality. Eventually you realise he has become immortal, and
is doomed to wander the labyrinths of the city forever. She works
completely non-digitally - all of the effects done in-camera. The
lighting consists of her hand-holding torches throughout the hour or
more exposure.
Interesting chat ensued. One issue raised by the curator - he notices
within the ACP audience, the general public are quite willing to suspend
their belief and enjoy this genre of photos for what they are, artworks.
But amongst the more photo-focused crowd, he notices a distinct
hostility to the constructed image. The ACP's documentary photographic
exhibitions tend to get a much more receptive response.
Me, I quite enjoy the constructed photograph, to a point. The Gregory
Crewdson hyperbole do little for me. But to the other extreme, I get
quite bored with photos that perpetuate the premise that the
photographer is just an unbiased conduit of reality. Wankel Adams
photos, I call them.
But naturally, I will be at the talk next month for the °SOUTH: WAR
floortalk. Man, Tim Page will be there.
http://tmp.acp.org.au/future/
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