Shot (Exhibition 20)

Shot was fun, It was good to see the teachers work. As this isn't counting towards my exhibitions I can be full biased and say that Silvia's work was by far the best in show.

Leica CCP Awards (Exhibition 19)

The Leica awards would have to one of the best shows I've seen all year.... It ranged from simple to stunning.... everyday to extraordinary. 2 photographers work really stood out to me. Steven Siewert with his work on the racing pigeon club documented the lives of the people who race homing pigeons and opened a window to what seemed to be a fairly closed world ( I can't imgine ever going to a pigeon race). and Stephen Dupont who's work in Afghanistan was to me both pure photojournalism and humor mixed into 2 different works

War.... what is it good for? (Exhibition 18)

The exhibition Icon and Archive at AWM was one of my favorite exhibitions this year. but it got me thinking did it go some way to glorify war? was it meant to fill me with national pride? nationalism is a dangerous thing in my book.......... anyway, the photos were quite striking and are an important record... some of them were even beautiful....



I had too many standouts to put up pics of them all but here is a short list of my favorites

Frank Hurley
Supporting troops of the 1st Australian Division walking on a duckboard track....

Unidentified AWRS photographer
Interior of a damaaged French cottage at Villers-Bretonneux

Unidentified AWRS photographer
View of the ruins of the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral at Ypres

Len Chetwyn
Australians at El Alamein

Frank Hurley
Death the Reaper

Edward Cranstone
Prints from the album Australia 1939-1940

Damien Parker
They wandered off the beaten track

George Silk
Long-range shooting

M16 Dan O'Day (Exhibition 17)

Short and sweet.... Dan O'day's work was haunting, with really nice colours, I was a big fan of this exhibition. Not much else to say other than....The exhibition that shared the gallery (fathers and sons) would have been much better if there wasn't an odd mix of colour and b&w. I love both techniques and individual photos were nice and gave life to the subject but when a colour and a B&W prints were together it was just distracting.

beyond a reasonable pun (Exhibition 16)

Beyond reasonable drought at OPH down in the strangers gallery.... why it's called that is a stpry for another time. The exhibition, it really showed what a mess this country is in.... so dry, we live on the driest continent on earth (if you don't count Antarctica(yes it's a continent and yes its technically the driest)) yet we grow wet crops like cotton and rice.... to make matters worse we export the raw product and then buy it back as goods.......... whats with that? Oh no something got me started about the farming practices that are killing our country.
As for the photos the ones that stood out to me were

Dust to dust by Darren Clark.
and

Girl in the reservoir by Rodney Dekker

Pinhole (Exhibition 15)

The parliament house of Australia.... the seat of power.... capital hill. A high tech building playing host to low tech photography. No lens= No worries.
I love pinhole photography, it's fun and simple.... and it can be cheap.
This exhibition was great, it showed you don't have to spend a bucket load to make nice photographs. It was also good to see a pin exhibition somewhere other than a "community gallery"

Don Burrows + Stephen Best *(Exhibition 14)

Travels with a camera, dream job... well my dream job anyway......
Don's exhibition shows just how to live your dream, images from around the country and indeed around the world. images that you can feel a real connection to. I really liked this exhibition it's just a sham that exhibitions in restaurants and cafes are always annoying because you never feel quite welcome and that makes it hard to make a true connection with the work.

Stephen Best seems to have his head around the world of digital printing, in fact he seems to be a a fountain of knowledge.... He also has high quality work to back him up. His website is well worth a look....

Stephen Best

Don Burrows

Charles Bayliss: A modern vision + Richard Green (Exhibition 12 +13)

National Library of Australia.

A lifetime of work(1850-1897) from Charles Bayliss that gives us a glimpse into what life was like in days gone by.
His work is not only beautiful to look at but is an important historical document, making it all the more interesting to me.
My favorites were the panoramas of Sydney.

I feel that the work more than holds it's own against the giant digital prints (Richard Green) located right next to it. I felt while Richard's work was impressive it was to me just like he threw a bunch of money at the task. I just couldn't connect with the images

Strike a pose (Exhibition 11)

National Archives of Australia.

I've never been a huge fan of fashion photography.... When ever I look at a shoot I get the feeling that it's all been done before.
Strike a pose gave justification to my thoughts, almost every modern fashion shoot can be seen in one form or another in this exhibition.

The exhibition has some interesting prints but made me think more that the fashion photography industry has hardly moved in 30 years...... very interesting.

CMAG (Exhibition 10)

It's the future... well holograms didn't quite make their way into our daily lives in this brave new world, but they have found a home in gallery 1 at CMAG. I'm not sure exactly what David Warren was trying to say with his works but I think it had something to do with technology dehumanising communication. I enjoyed the main piece with a running SMS style conversation accompanied by holograms.... only it was let down by a poor quality hang.

Showcase gallery ACMP (Exhibition 9)

ACMP, hmmmm..... For the most part i'm not really into advertising style photography,
The exhibition seemed a bit of an ego stroking exercise to me but there were some brilliant portraits on show as well as the standard advertising filler. I particularly liked Monalbetti and Cambells portrait of Geoffrey Rush and the portrait of Dr Fred Hollows. The rest of the show to me just looked like a demonstration of what photoshop is capable of. However my opinion of the show doesn't reflect the talent of all of the photographers, I'm just not sure I'd want to seem them on the gallery wall instead of the glossy magazine that they came out of.

Picture paradise (Exhibition 8)

Vast, big, extensive.
How to put 100 years of photography in Asia Pacific region into one show..... I wouldn't know where to start and it appears the curator didn't either, The show seemed to be a mish mash of context and styles, it was almost like the just hung the pictures in date order or as they came out of the packing crates. other than the time line not much held the direction of the show together.
Also it has a touch of the colonialist to it, a retrospect through eyes that no longer exist...... Now that that's said, The photos themselves were amazing. The different photographic tectonics used fascinated me, I was looking a print (Albumen) that was over 100a years old and the amount of detail and the sharpness blew me away, compared with many of its contemporaries the Albumen prints were such high quality. My pick of the show would either be the huge panorama of Sydney or the seemingly less significant "Dawn Patrol" by Towner H. Phillips C1941.
Overall and amazing collection of photographs even if I had to put on my Rule Britannia glasses.

Iddid Djura (Exhibition 7)

Way to ruin powerful documentary images by mounting them in distracting coloured mounts. It made it hard to concentrate on the images, once i managed to look past the mount the pictures were well quite powerful just wish I was able to pay more attention..........

Chris Fortescue: Main space resonator (Exhibition 6)

I really liked the sound scape. 56 sub-audible tones coming from 4 speakers while the viewer looks at a painted over window.
The work will be different for each different person who views it as depending on the sensitivity of their ears, where the are in the gallery and their level of concentration. This makes it an almost personalised art work.


For me the other works went the other way and separated the viewer from the piece by placing the (coloured squares) barriers in right in the middle of the pictures, As Chris said it seems to make a bland picture interesting making people want to look over the fence.

Compressed: Chris Morrison (Exhibition 5)

Still photograph based video, time-lapse... call it what you will.

The work was a brilliant, almost seamless voyage.
my favorite scenes were the sky shots, watching the stars and clouds move across the sky was by far my favorite part.

Jorge Deustua (Exhibition 4)

By far the best exhibition i've seen this semester, Interment and personal the photos give a glimpse into the lives of the subject, I felt I could walk away from each pic knowing something about the people contained within. The works were also a memory, a moment in time held forever still.....

I really enjoyed meeting the photographer.

http://www.nationalcapital.gov.au/events_and_venues/showcase/ hmmm the link still wont work

Setting the tone (Exhibition 3)

As you can tell by now I like cheesy titles. And on the subject of cheesy.... when an effect if used without a reason the result is often super cheesy..... this is not however the case with the exhibition at the drill hall gallery (MICHELE MAURIN: 'FLEUR DE HENNE') My favorite work from this exhibition was the urban scenes.... NYC and Hong Kong made it for me..... The exhibition has made me think a lot more about toning prints

Canvassing for votes (Exhibition 2)

Eeeek is that a canvas print.... well yes an no.
Yes it's printed on canvas but no it isn't a the standard cliched canvas print.

David Patterson's exhibition on Canada at the CSIRO was full of beautifully made and mounted prints.
The works that he had on canvas suited been printed on canvas and I think that is what makes the difference.

Interior motive (Exhibition 1)

An exhibition of pics of interiors.... seems harmless enough....
Interesting pictures, well composed, well exposed.... inviting, imgaes tha draw you into the room.....
But then printed on hideous super gloss.... fortunately the images were strong enough for me to look beyond the mirror sheen, a lesser picture would have been lost in my reflection.