Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope
Poetry
of Place I Julia Charles
ANCA
Gallery I 30 October - 17 November 2024
Julia Charles has tertiary qualifications in Landscape Architecture, Environmental Horticulture, and Photoimaging. She teaches in applied object design and is a self-employed photographer.
This artist’s photography exhibition Poetry of Place has been promoted as a collection of photographic works which reveal a rare way of seeing – offering an intimate distillation of beauty in the built landscape. I’m not sure that I agree with the use of the word rare, since I am familiar with the work of various other photographers who also find beauty in selected parts of buildings. However, I certainly accept that the images in this show portray beauty in the buildings photographed; indeed they do so most successfully.
There
are 26 giclee prints, mostly in rich black and white, on archival cotton rag
fine art paper in the exhibition, plus a single non-photographic piece which is
laminated oak veneer and charred Oregon. The prints are sensual studies of the
built form. When visiting the display, I asked the artist, Julia Charles,
why she had opted to include the latter piece of artwork and was pleased to
hear in response that she simply felt it belonged there – because it certainly
fits with the overall portrayal of beauty.
Charles has a background in furniture making, landscape architecture and lecturing in art and design. So it is unsurprising that she included sculptural “timbers.” She also describes herself as an architectural and fine art photographer. Once again it is not a surprise therefore that the photographs are of elements of the architecture of buildings – most, she told me, being in Sydney, whilst about four portray places in Canberra. I have no doubt whatsoever that all Canberrans would instantly recognise, in Untitled #22, the landmark that is the Australian Academy of Science’s Shine Dome building.
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| Untitled #22, 2024 © Julia Charles |
None of the artworks are titled so, whilst studying each of them we could, if we wished, try to name the buildings we were looking at. But in many cases of course we would be unsuccessful – perhaps because it is a building with which we are not familiar, or maybe we simply do not recognise the specific elements the artist has included in her photographic creation. I wonder how many exhibition visitors have been able to attach a building name to Untitled #3.
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| Untitled #3, 2016 © Julia Charles |
Camilla Block, of Durbach Block Jaggers architects, has written “Julia Charles has an unerring artistic eye. She convincingly translates sculptural weight and power within a two dimensional medium. Julia’s pictures are somehow unafraid, deftly stepping toward feeling, shadow and beauty.” Untitled #2, the image used by the ANCA gallery to promote the exhibition is only one of the exhibits that show the artist’s keen artistic eye.
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| Untitled #2, 2016 © Julia Charles |
The artist herself says she tries to create pictures that have a poetic quality. She works slowly, finding from experience that her patience is rewarded. As I moved around the displayed works and looked into them, I saw how Charles had explored the light and shadows being cast on her subjects and used them to remove unwanted material. I observed how she had explored the qualities of reflected, diffused and dappled light and created images revealing elements in the architecture that are beautiful and which sensitively express emotions. Untitled #4 is a fine example of her use of light and shadow.
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| Untitled #4, 2016 © Julia Charles |
The exhibition’s title is most appropriate as the artworks combine design and art, uncovering the "poetry of place" to produce minimalist, graphic, and sculpture-based compositions.
Readers who are unable to visit this exhibition might like to look at the artist’s works on her webpages here.
This review is also available on the author's blog here.
