Photography Review by Brian Rope
Various artists: Traces Unseen
PhotoAccess Online Gallery (http://www.gallery.photoaccess.org.au/)
Until 20 June
2020
Traces
Unseen
features three interstate artists Damien Shen, Todd Johnson and Tara Gilbee,
all working at the cutting edge of photomedia.
Shen has created and etched tintypes to respond to archives documenting his rich heritage of mainland China and the indigenous Ngarrindjeri people. Johnson has studied the effects of the geographical environment on our emotions and behaviour. Gilbee contributes solargraphic works capturing a forensic digital tracing of a quarantine site. Each has explored contemporary questions relating to personal identity.
In her catalogue essay, exhibition curator Aimee Board writes “Each exhibited artist calls into question the essence of the photograph as an imprint of light, while at the same time uncovering the historical role and narrative of the image."
Renowned
for his skills as a draughtsman and explorations of his personal heritage, Shen
combines traditional imagery and the archival source to create his works. His
practice is to deconstruct the world around him to understand his identity. Here,
he has drawn on archival images of paintings sourced from various Dynasty
periods, tying in with family heritage from China. He shows us himself as
Emperor mounted on horseback, but in his Ngarrindjeri homeland. This work
strongly resonated with me, just a year after seeing some aspects of various
dynasties whilst touring China.
Damien Shen, Never Venture, Never
Win, 2020, etched tin type, 4 x 5
inches. Courtesy of MARS Gallery.
After
making charcoal drawings of relatives as he recorded their oral histories,
Shen photographed them. He overlaid the resultant images with intricately
etched lines, exploring darker aspects of Australia’s complex past. The
resultant masks are quite fascinating to look at, although I didn’t find them
quite as compelling as some of his previous “vintage style” portraits.
Gilbee
has a multidisciplinary approach to art making. Her practice moves between
individual studio work to the exploration of interesting sites and context for
making and presenting work, with a focus on the intervening spaces.
Using solargraphy,
a pinhole photographic method for recording the marks of the sun rising and
falling, she tells the story of the Old Quarantine site at Point Nepean in
Victoria, set up in 1852 to protect the local population. Ships carrying
diseased passengers were required to land and disembark, where luggage and
people were disinfected before heading to Melbourne. Another appropriate
exploration given the quarantine arrangements most recently used because of
COVID-19. Gilbee says, With the pinhole,..it's like the porthole that you
look out in a ship or a guard looking through to the inside of a cell. It
has a really strong ocular and pupil effect…
Tara
Gilbee ‘Untitled’ (Solagraph – Nepean Quarantine Station (1) 6 months)
2017-2019
Digital scan of original photographic record. Dimensions variable.
Johnson
employs analogue techniques to explore the materiality of photographic images resulting
from a physical exchange between the body, film, and elements of the
environment. His ongoing series, Eighty Lakes, documents
numerous Australian lakes including Burley Griffin. Once developed, the film is
later submerged in water collected on site, for durations of up to two months.
Gradually, the film becomes malleable, as minerals, bacteria and pollution of
the water create unpredictable abstractions. The shapes and patterns in these
images are wonderful to explore.
Todd
Johnson, 1 week, 3 days, 2 hours, 2020, archival giclee print, 80 x 80 cm
Johnson considers
film to be an obsolete medium and sees a three parts connection between the
obsolescence of film images, the technology itself, and landscape in an age
of environmental instability. He speaks of “decaying slide film”
productively performing the material embodiment of environmental deterioration.
Many people scanning their old slide collections during COVID-19 isolation will
have discovered decay in them, so should relate to that.
As curator
Board writes “As luminous inscriptions of light, the works presented in Traces
Unseen investigate the intangible aspects of histories and of place. They also
capture, indirectly, points at which the producer and the produced converge.”
This
review was also published in The Canberra Times and in Brian Rope Photography’s
blog at https://brianropephotography.wordpress.com/,
both on 30 May 2020.
