As visceral as the experience of watching a great film may be, a single image – whether a photograph from a film set, a frozen moment or a marketing shot – can resonate as much as the film itself. Yet these images do not just ‘appear.’ A still photographer captures such moments, documenting the creation, interactions and processes of our cinematic worlds.
In general, the photos surrounding the process of filmmaking are not thought of as art objects or as portraiture. Yet Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits, presented by the National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, displays these photographs precisely as portraiture. Covering 100 years of Australian filmmaking, Starstruck reveals behind-the-scenes and promotional images from culturally significant films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, Muriel’s Wedding and My Brilliant Career.
As co-curator Penelope Grist explains, “The exhibition is structured around particular stories, almost like a film script; it has a beginning, a journey and a resolution.” Yet the ultimate intention of the exhibition is to conjure the atmosphere and story of each image. “Every portrait has a self-contained world of its own,” says Grist. “The still photographer’s job on a film set is to capture the whole story and spirit of the film in one frame and that’s our guiding brief as well; to see these portraits as emblematic of the whole fictional film world, but also the real story of the making of the film.”
In this way Starstruck takes portraiture back to its most basic tenets (a picture of a person) and looks to the form’s central and sustaining tension; the divide between performance and reality.
Starstruck: Australian Movie Portraits
Childers Art Space
26 February – 7 April
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Symbols and images dance across Nathan Beard’s vast body of work, all connecting back to his Thai-Australian heritage. We step inside the artist’s studio space in Preston, Victoria, and discuss his upcoming exhibition at Sweet Pea Gallery.
Radical Textiles, A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia, shows us how textiles evoke material memories while keeping the radical lineage of needle and thread alive.
bagan bariwariganyan: echoes of country, curated by Jonathan Jones and now showing at Bundanon, highlights a long history of Indigenous art on the New South Wales south coast, with works and installations from Jones, Aunty Julie Freeman, Aunty Cheryl Davison, and Mickey of Ulladulla.
