Marian Drew

website

Aussie Up: Narelle Autio

Narelle Autio, whose partner is Trent Parke, the only Australian member of Magnum Photos, is also a photographer who has in recent years established a strong set of aesthetic and thematic concerns. In much of her work, she examines the Australian relationship to water (Anna, here is another artist working with underwater photography you should check out!).

These are from her series 'Murray Cod':

Narelle Autio, Swimming Cod, 2006

Narelle Autio, Trophy, 2006

Narelle Autio, Tocumwal, 2006

Narelle Autio, The Big Cod, 2006

If that giant fish looks weird to you, this kind of thing is a widespread phenomenon in Australia. Towns compete to outdo each other with 'Big Things' that represent their local industries and points of pride, ranging from the Big Pineapple to the Giant Ram, to the Big Tennis Racquet (yes, that's how you spell it). You can check out more of these here or on the ever-reliable Wikipedia.

Narelle Autio is represented by Stills Gallery in Sydney. You can see more of her work here. Do it.

Aussie Up: Selina Ou

Although much of her work is made overseas, Selina Ou (b. 1977) is a young Melbourne-based photographer who makes some pretty cool environmental portraits. These are from her 'Chile' series, 2006-2007:





I like these quite a lot. When she travels, she manages to successfully avoid falling into cliched representations of the other. As a result, and because of the consistency of her aesthetic approach, there is a striking universal quality to her portraiture.

Ou is represented by GRANTPIRRIE in Sydney. Check out her artist page here.

Aussie Up: Anne Zahalka

The other day I was in Cellar Stories (great bookshop - nice one Providence!) and found an issue of the New York-based Big Magazine from 2002 devoted to Australian art, mostly photography. Included were several bodies of work by photographers with whom I wasn't familiar. I wondered: were these great series one-hit wonders? Have the artists moved into other media? Are they too underground for me? Not exactly. I did a bit of Googling, and a lot of them have, it seems, since given up or de-emphasised art practice and are now working in the commercial world, either in Australia or the US or the UK.

I often struggle to find photographers working in Australia whose work I enjoy. This may have something to do with the tendency to leave the country and pursue other options overseas, or the extent to which commercial work ends up attracting and holding talented young photographers, or the fact that most galleries in Sydney and Melbourne are relatively unenthusiastic about representing artists working only with photography. In any case, given the quality of art education and photographic education in Australia, and the vibrancy of the emerging arts scene in our big cities, we produce a surprisingly small number of accomplished photographic artists.

This week, one last time, I thought I would show you the work of some contemporary Australian photographers.

Firstly, Anne Zahalka (b. 1957), who has been prolific since the 1980s. These are from her series Leisureland (1998-2001), which show on a grand scale the Australian tendency to recreate.

Anne Zahalka, Cole Classic, 1998

Anne Zahalka, Wood Chopping Stadium, 1999

Anne Zahalka, Star City Casino (after Breugel), 1999

Anne Zahalka, Model Railway Club, 1998

For what it's worth I think this body of work is far stronger than the British photographer Simon Roberts' recent book We English, which explores similar themes.

Check out more of Anne Zahalka's work on her website.

Sub(urbia): Rick Amor

Rick Amor (b. 1948) was a student of the widely-known Australian figurative painter John Brack in Melbourne in the 1960s. Brack was a member of the so-called 'Antipodeans' group, which protested against the dominance of American abstract impressionism in the late 1950s. Maintaining a commitment to figurative representation, Amor has an altogether darker vision of the urban landscape than Howard Arkley or Jeffrey Smart:





Call me crazy, but sometimes I think if I could paint like this, I would stop with this photography caper.

Rick Amor is represented by Niagara Galleries in Melbourne. See more of his work here.

Sub(urbia): Jeffrey Smart

Australian figurative painter Jeffrey Smart (b. 1921), who has lived in Italy since the 1960s, could easily be dismissed as an Edward Hopper knock-off, although I think there are new and more interesting things going on in his work:





This one, called Turn Off to Dandenong Road, looks uncannily like some of Stephen Shore's 1970s and 80s large-format color work (say, for example, this photograph). I'm not too sure of Smart's references, but I have no doubt that he is more than familiar with that era of American photography.

Sub(urbia): Howard Arkley

This week (well, let's pretend it's last week), I thought I would mention the work of some Australian painters who have dealt with suburban and urban space. While America may have invented the freakish thing we know to be the suburb, it spread quickly. Tim Davis, writing about his series 'The New Antiquity', writes:

Many of my pictures did not look particular to Rome, but might have been taken outside of Phoenix or Cairo or Jakarta. The suburbs turn out to be a globalized space, with building materials and construction styles and rubbish (and maybe hopes and dreams) flooding across national borders.

This is true, but some things can be more specifically placed. Howard Arkley (1951-1999) drew on Australian suburban vernacular, often painting from real estate newspaper clippings and photographs of houses in outer Melbourne suburbs:






Arkley died of a heroin overdose in 1999 while what was to be his final exhibition, at the Venice Biennale, was underway. His work has since gained a large audience within Australia, and is widely known and admired among the general population.

For those who like the recording artist Nick Cave (I'm looking at you, Dan Kwon), one of Arkley's last paintings was a terrific portrait of Cave commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra.

More Aussies: Glenn Sloggett

Glenn Sloggett is based in Melbourne and makes these dirty little pictures about the suburbs. I don't know if they'll seem odd to an American audience, but for me they ring true.

This green thing here is called a bin. It's where we put our rubbish.

Glenn Sloggett, 666, 2006

Glenn Sloggett, Child's Grave, 2006

Glenn Sloggett, Crying Yogi, 2006

Glenn Sloggett, Budgies, 2006

I used to live across the road from where this last one was made, in the window of a 2-dollar shop. I've photographed it too, but could never have made it look as perverse as this.

A budgie is a lovely little coloured bird which flies around Australia and eats a lot of seeds. A budgie smuggler is what you might wear to the beach if you are a 50-something man and would like a nice tan on the back of your upper thighs.

Glenn Sloggett is represented by Stills Gallery in Sydney. Check out more of his work here.

More Aussies: Paul Knight

Paul Knight is an Australian artist currently working in the UK with photography and sculpture. His photographs can be pretty full-on, as you can see below:

Paul Knight, 1 Year and 8 Months, 2008

Paul Knight, 11 Months and 17 Days, 2008

Paul Knight, 14 Months #1, 2009

Paul Knight, 14 Months #2, 2009

This series, and other similar work he is making now, treads a fascinating line between what is perceived to be 'real' and what is staged.

For more, check out his website.

More Aussies: Shaun Gladwell

This week I thought I would share some more Australian work which is worth having a peek at.

Firstly, Shaun Gladwell, who was Australia's representative at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Working mostly with video, but also with painting and installation, Gladwell has most recently dealt with some of the myths of Australian-ness.

His videos are in many respects motion studies, and are usually installed in large dark exhibition spaces. These clips don't do the work justice, but you get some idea:

Shaun Gladwell - Interceptor Surf Sequence (excerpt), 2009

Shaun Gladwell - Apologies to Roadkill 1-6 (excerpt), 2009

I saw this last work in Brisbane a few months ago, and it moved me. Seriously. I can't even really talk about it. I wish you could all see the whole thing for real.

If you like, you can see some very un-revealing stills on his page at Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Aussie Goodness: Darren Sylvester

One last Australian artist for this week: Darren Sylvester, who is based and Melbourne and is a critic in the BFA photo program at RMIT. He mainly works in photography, but has exhibited in various other media.

Here is a selection of his works from the mid-2000s, which cleverly use the visual language of commercial photography to investigate the effects of popular culture on contemporary life.

Darren Sylvester, My Baby Message Me, 2006

Darren Sylvester, Don't Substitute a Life to Satisfy Mine, 2007

Darren Sylvester, Just Death is True, 2006

Darren Sylvester, Our Future Was Ours, 2005

Darren Sylvester, If It Hasn't Happened For You, Maybe It Never Will, 2006

Interestingly, this series reflects the definite trend in Australian art photography towards the highly staged. There is no strong tradition of straight photography in Australia - despite many excellent practitioners of 'street' photography over the past fifty years, these artists' work in large part resemble paler imitations of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Garry Winogrand (or, lately, Trent Parke, Australia's only member of Magnum). Things are as bad now as they have ever been - I'm embarrassed to post this, but to see just how bad, have a look here to see the finalists in this year's Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize, which at $80,000 is one of the richest photography prizes anywhere (for a better idea of the hodge-podge of traditions informing contemporary Australian photographic work, have a look at the more highly respected William & Winifred Bowness prize here).

For a more pleasurable art-viewing experience, you can see more of Darren Sylvester' work over the last 10+ years here.

Aussie Goodness: Louise Hearman

Next up in the Aussie-fest, Louise Hearman, a painter based in Melbourne. Her themes are dark and mysterious, sometimes sinister and frequently amusing. The inevitable reference to David Lynch often comes up when her work is discussed, but a lot of her images seem to draw on the vernacular mined by much photography - sublime suburban landscapes, moonlit carparks and playing fields.

Here, I've selected images from her work which incorporate some kind of disembodied floating object, one of her favorite tropes.






See a lot more of her work at the websites of her Sydney gallery and her Melbourne gallery (follow the artist links to her name).

Incidentally, Hearman is the partner of Australia's most renowned (and unfortunately, most controversial) photographer, Bill Henson.

Aussie Goodness: Matthew Sleeth

This week I thought I would share the work of some contemporary Australian artists with everyone.

First up, Matthew Sleeth, and his work published in 2002 as Tour of Duty, now out of print. The work was made during 1999-2000 in East Timor, where at the time the Australian military was leading INTERFET, the International Force for East Timor, a multinational force mandated by the United Nations to intervene in the humanitarian and security crisis begun after the East Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence from Indonesia.

The book cleverly steps away from the language of photojournalism to illustrate the manipulation of the media and the voting public by the Australian government and Defence Force. In showing an act of military intervention essentially as one big PR exercise, the work calls into question these kinds of 'humanitarian' missions, and the motivations behind them. It is undoubtedly one of the most important photo books to have been published in Australia, not only for its incisive critical position, but also for its deployment of a new visual language in the environment of war.

Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty

Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty

Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty

Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty

Matthew Sleeth, from Tour of Duty

This last one, for the uninitiated, shows a bunch of Aussie soldiers putting on a barbie and cooking some snaggers for the locals. Some of them can be seen wearing thongs.

A slightly Web 1.0 presentation of images from the book can be found here. Matthew Sleeth's more recent work, which is quite different from Tour of Duty, can be seen on his mind-bending website.