Traditionally, photographs reveal the character of places like Perth through iconography or colour (Bankwest Tower, sunsets). “This is the opposite of that,” says curator Chelsea Hopper. With HERE&NOW17: New Photography, Hopper describes that the way a photograph is taken, the activity of looking, is equally compelled by place.
Snapped by iPhone on Perth’s four ‘corridor’ train lines, a series of tiny photographs by Scott Burton document the brightness and utility of the liminal spaces that link Perth’s gentrified precincts. Usually ‘exhibited’ on Instagram, Hopper relocates them to the gallery, articulating the vitality of the margins of photography.
In Kings Park, Lucy Griggs picks wildflowers (some native, some nominal natives). These are laid on cyanotype paper, which reacts to sunlight and records the blossom’s outline in deep indigo, the colour of Perth’s noon sky. “Perth is the sunniest city. We get 8.8 hours of sunlight a day,” Hopper reports. “Lucy uses this light as a camera.”
When impressed by a WA landscape, Dan McCabe purposefully commits it to memory, to later recreate using lustrous, coloured slates of Perspex for his Joiner series. Without using a camera, Hopper explains, McCabe is nonetheless looking, noticing, and taking a picture.
Driving on the Tonkin, Lydia Trethewey photographs the plaque lining Perth’s arterial airport highway: power lines, traffic furniture. Trethewey applies solvents to her prints, endowing them with a moody, warped surface. A 3000-frame animation collates these images into a billowing, sublime vision of inter-suburb travel.
HERE&NOW17 focuses not on what Perth looks like, but on ways of seeing Perth, how image crafting happens here: “This project is about photography, not of photography,” says Hopper.
HERE&NOW17: New Photography
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery
29 April – 8 July
Past meets present in Leyla Steven’s latest exhibition, now showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and co-curated by Artspace. The Australian-Balinese artists adopts a collaborative approach to restitution, scrutinising the systems of conservation and documentation we have inherited.
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About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
With their iconic painted poker machines and installations, notably featured in the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, the Tennant Creek Brio are now taking over Melbourne with a new show at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
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Heide Museum of Modern Art’s summer blockbuster exhibition is unveiling the breadth and beauty of Italian modernism through design. With over 170 objects spanning sixty years, Molto Bello explores the cultural impact of this period of creativity and invention.
