Brian Rope | Photography

Parallel Play | Rory Hamovit

Photo Access | 29 June to 12 August

Parallel Play is an Australian premiere of new work by Los Angeles-based photographer Rory Hamovit, who has a BA in photography from Bard College and an MFA in photography from Yale School of Art. His work deals with concepts of masculinity, queerness and their myriad interpretations through performance and play. 

The work in this exhibition depicts puppets made by the artist that are physical manifestations of playful characters and ideas developed in dreams, or in a state of meditation. The show’s title is a term coined by a sociologist, Dr Mildred Parten, a century ago – in the 1920s. She used the term to describe one of her six stages of childhood development – the point at which toddlers play alongside each other, sharing play tools, aware of each other but each doing their own thing.

So, in a sense, here we have this artist’s playthings. His images have similar designs and reflect a recurring idea. They are all black and white. We see them alongside each other, but they are playing (in parallel) rather than communicating with each other.

There is a mixture of works on display – a single channel video titled Welcome, a Projector Series of the artist’s photographs, four framed selenium-toned gelatin silver prints, and four inkjet prints on lightbox paper.

Shadow Puppet, 2018 – Inkjet print on lightbox paper © Rory Hamovit

The video is seen on a small TV screen and its soundtrack through headphones. The projector series is also self-help and uses an old projector.

Projector Series © Rory Hamovit (Installation image by Brian Rope)

In the prints we see puppet balloons – you know the type made by twisting inflated balloons together into various shapes to entertain children (and even adults). There are sock puppets and shadow puppets. There are silk butterflies bought from a shop – pinned above a piece of glass covered by dirt. These images were all developed from initially sketched ideas that the artist played with. And the photography approach used further alters the starting point idea.

There are other intriguing images – such as one of a slender woman with “Popeye arms” or, if you prefer, looking as though her biceps have ruptured. There are fingers attached to a hand walking out of a tower of books. There is an image of a curious sock puppet. And was that a movie director puppet in a directors’ chair? Each image provides us with a bit of light-hearted fun. 

The catalogue essay by Philip Anderson reminds us that the medium we know as photography is very much about light and shadows. He notes that “Hamovit has reimagined the basic elements…..to make an unfathomable shadow portrait of a soaring bird (Shadow Puppet), ….so playful and silly…” This is the image shown above and was the one that seemed to grab everyone’s immediate attention when I was in the gallery.

See the exhibition if you can and be ready to smile at the playful nature of it all – remember when you were at the toddler stage. Maybe take your own toddlers (if you have any) to see it and then take them home to have their own play session – perhaps making puppets, perhaps doing something entirely different. You could even parallel play alongside them.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.

Watching Me, Watching You

Photography and Videography | Brian Rope

Watching Me, Watching You | Jemima Campey

Tuggeranong Arts Centre Foyer | 8 to 29 October 2022

Jemima Campey (Ngunnawal/Ngambri lands) graduated from the Australian National University in 2021 with degrees in English and Visual Arts. She is currently completing her Honours in Visual Arts.

 

Campey makes photos, performances, installations and films. Through the use of appropriated and reworked materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, she touches various overlapping themes and strategies, including performance and contemporary culture. Her text and photographic works are often deeply personal, providing insight into her act of making art.

 

I’ve previously seen only a little of Campey’s artwork – videos in which she examined the phenomenon of the ‘apology video’, exploring how the spread of social media was impacting and re-shaping the nature of peoples’ emotions.

 

In this exhibition, Watching Me, Watching You, she has worked with both appropriated material and newly created photographs, and presents a selection of her recent works, united by their focus on the intersections of contemporary culture, online behaviours, and performance.

 

She has drawn from her own experiences growing up during the rise of social media and from the writings of Rayne Fisher-Quaan, a Canadian political commentator who, aged seventeen, created the organisation March for Our Education to lead student actions protesting the repeal of the sex education content of a Health and Physical Education curriculum.

 

Campey has used video and photography to make sense of some aspects of online life and subcultures that may not be well known to those who do not engage with particular trends or online platforms. A 500cm long inkjet print titled Doomscrolling reveals the types of interactions that might be read on some platforms, such as Pinterest. Here is just a tiny section of the text on the scroll:

 

SHE IS BEAUTIFUL. HER BODY IS BEAUTIFUL. With that said, she is clearly tilting a lot and flexing to make herself look thinner and more toned. she’s also using the clothing to her advantage to make her body look how she wants, which is her right, just remember that everything on the internet can be so tainted and altered from its natural state.

 

And one response to that:

 

yesss, thank you also notice that she like purposely took her shirt off for the pic

 

We all know that social media can infiltrate almost every part of our lives. We can present ourselves to others in whatever way we choose. Some opt to perform for their audience, whom they may or may not know, to create the image they wish to portray. Doing so raises such questions as “What are the impacts of adopting a moral superiority within your online persona and brand?”

 

Campey does not claim to answer these questions. Rather, she considers how authenticity and perception come into play in various online spaces, such as dating apps.

 

That’s All I Have to Say (a 9-channel digital video which runs for a little over three minutes) is intriguing. It is important to put on the headphones and listen to the words spoken by numerous people whilst viewing the images scattered on the screen.

 

That’s All I Have To Say. 2021. Still from video 03_07

Lovers’ Hands, (a ten-minute long looped video screening within a lovely and very small handmade frame) is also well worth close inspection.

 

Lovers Hands (2021). Installation image supplied. Digital video and handmade frame. 10_02, looped

There is a performance video piece, Routine, showing the artist herself engaging in a somewhat drawn-out and surreal process performing wellness and wellness-related activities – skincare, vitamins, hair brushing and so on.

 

Routine (still) 27_45. 2022

 

And to complete this modest but thoughtful exhibition, there is just one photograph. It is a self-portrait, Saint Belle, again focussing on the wellness industry, which is booming as consumers spend on products to improve their health, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep, and mindfulness.

 

Saint Belle. 2022. Inkjet print, 84.1x59.4 cm

This review was first published online on 17/10/22 by the Canberra Times here and then in print (page 27) on 24/10/22. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Sky Eternal by Cat Wilson, Up in the Air by Claire Grant, Wild Blue Yonder by Photo Access members

Photography | Brian Rope

Sky Eternal | Cat Wilson

Up in the Air | Claire Grant

Photo Access | 30 June – 30 July

The artists in these two exhibitions have used sky space to explore our human condition. They invite us to reflect on the importance of the surface of our planet and the sky space above - and the care needed to keep everything in good condition.

Blue moon. Blue Monday. Blue blood. Is blue hardwired into our psyche? Did it contribute to our evolutionary development - as hunter-gatherers who learnt to survive among blue skies and oceans? It is the major colour of the works in these shows. Most appropriately, an accompanying Photo Access members’ exhibition has the theme “Wild Blue Yonder.”

 

Trevor Lund, Exploring Scoresby Sound, 2022

From the “Wild Blue Yonder” members’ exhibition

Across the ages, blue has been used when visualising something from our imagination, out of reach or the divine. As a pigment, blue is extremely rare in nature, despite being found in the environment around us – from the tranquil light blue of a sky to the melancholy deep blue of an ocean. Unlike particular reds, browns and yellows, blue pigment cannot be created from materials within our easy grasp. Arguably, blue represents an entirely new world beyond our own.

Sky Eternal by Cat Wilson is an immersive video installation, which mirrors moving cloudscapes. The immediate reaction on entering the room regardless of the point the video has reached is that one is looking at a Rorschach inkblot. I wonder what Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli would make of this slowly changing inkblot. Accompanied by an ambient soundscape, composed by Jamie Saxe, this is a captivating work. The catalogue suggests it “mediates on the ways in which the universal and timeless sky unites us all, a metaphor for innovation, positivity, hope and heaven.” When I joined them, I wanted to ask others viewing it what they saw in the inkblot. As they were transfixed, I couldn’t interrupt.

Cat Wilson - Eternal Sky, 2021 - video still

Up in the Air by Claire Grant includes three things. Firstly, there is a 90 x 400 cm composite of 57 A4-sized cyanotypes each printed on fragile paper ephemera that the artist collected during employment as a flight attendant. The papers originally were crew briefings providing details of routes she would be flying, so amongst the imagery she has created there is text and lines and also creases and marks - as she folded the paper to fit in her pocket during each trip.

The images are aerial vignettes framed by Grant’s 'office' windows, the plane's portholes. They are, truly, landscapes. As the aircraft flew over an outback mine, we can see that open cut mine’s landscape in regional Queensland laid out below us. Some of the cyanotypes are essentially white images of the clouds below the plane. Others reveal different aspects of the atmosphere. We are looking at skies filled with navigational charts to and from different destinations around Australia.

It is also worth noting that the artist captured the initial works with a phone camera, making use of its technical limitations to obtain the pixelated and repetitive images that she wanted for her pe-visualised end product. It is quite wonderful.

Claire Grant - Nothing's as precious as a hole in the Ground, 2021-22 (Detail)

Claire Grant - Nothing's as precious as a hole in the ground, 2021-22

On the opposite wall of the gallery is a series of individual artworks, each being cyanotypes and encaustic on washi paper - renowned for strength not fragility. Each image is framed by a porthole. Reflecting the recent period of air travel disruptions, many show terminal boards indicating numerous cancelled flights.

Claire Grant - CANCELLED(CBROvernight), 2022

Claire Grant - Up In The Air (Installation Photo 9)

On the end wall of the “aircraft’s corridor” is one further work - a large cyanotype portrayal of Employee 152578’s pre-employment dental record adding a final piece to this clever interpretation of Grant’s previous career. The whole exhibition opens up a shutdown world.

Claire Grant, Dental Record (Employee 152578), 2022 (Installation Photo)

This review was first published on page 10 of the Panorama supplement in The Canberra Times of 9 July 2022 and online here. It is also available on the author's blog here.

Entanglement

 Photomedia Exhibition | Brian Rope

ENTANGLEMENT | NOELENE LUCAS

Canberra Contemporary Art Space | Until 12 June 2022

Noelene Lucas is a video installation artist with a background in sculpture. Her work addresses our land from ecological and historical perspectives. It has been curated into major exhibitions in Australia, Europe and Asia, awarded three major Australia Council grants, Thailand, Paris and two Australia Council Tokyo residencies, the latter one deeply affecting both her life and art practice.

Birds are disappearing. Common wild birds connect us to nature. The chance of seeing a Kookaburra in SE Australia has halved since 1999. Those are just three of the messages presented on some of the video panels in this thought-provoking exhibition by Lucas.

Noelene Lucas, Bird text, 2022, (detail) multi-screen video

Other panels display slowly moving clouds and ocean waters overlaid with words such as Ozone (O3), Halons (CBrClF2), Halogenated Gases – Fluorine (F2), and Black Carbon (PM2.5). Those words are about a colourless unstable toxic gas with a pungent odour and powerful oxidizing properties, unreactive gaseous compounds of carbon with bromine and other halogens known to damage the ozone layer – including a poisonous pale-yellow gas that causes very severe burns on contact with skin, and a climate-forcing agent contributing to global warming.

 

Noelene Lucas, Entanglement, 2022, Multi-screen video installation with sound, Dimensions variable_022

I’m no scientist and had to research the meanings of some words when writing this. Nevertheless, the message about environmental changes and damage had been very clear to me whilst actually viewing the works in the gallery.

Another video panel reminds us – if we need any reminder – that “We are dependent for our wellbeing on the wellbeing of the environment.” And yet another informs us that “Filling the Hunter’s existing 23 massive mine voids will cost $25.3 billion but the government holds only $3.3 billion in bonds.”

 

Noelene Lucas, Entanglement, 2022, Multi-screen video installation with sound, Dimensions variable_008

This well-presented exhibition leaves visitors in no doubt that environmental issues are important and require urgent attention in order to “Save the planet” – words that passed by, overlaid against clouds, on another video panel.

Bird numbers and habitats have dwindled as we have destroyed many forests and wetlands, plus our previously clean air and water. Birds have disappeared as humans have destroyed their life support systems - as well as our own. So, it is most appropriate that there are also several videos of various birds and of water contaminated with drifting litter. The clear message is everywhere as you walk around the exhibition spending time watching the moving imagery.

 

Noelene Lucas, Galah, 2022, (detail) multi-screen video

Central to Lucas’s work is her investigation of the land from both environmental and historical perspectives. Land, birds and water quality in the light of climate change are key to the environmental research. At the base of all her video work is the exploration of time and fleeting moments.

 

Noelene Lucas, Entanglement, 2022, Multi-screen video installation with sound, Dimensions variable_011

Every day we hear or read about unprecedented flood or fires, that glaciers are melting faster and faster, that people’s homes and gardens are being inundated by rising sea levels. We are told there’s yet another crisis then, thankfully, that it’s passed.

We only have to consider the recent flood events in NSW and Queensland to appreciate the truth of those words. More crises do keep occurring and many of us now expect that, as a result of climate change inaction, they will only happen more and more frequently – that we are moving towards creating a world that our descendants do not deserve. If any reminder of the problem is needed this exhibition serves that purpose most effectively. 

Entanglement highlights so many environmental issues and points to our involvement in the climate change crisis. But it also points to where hope resides - in our contact with other life forms, in seeing and valuing and not being indifferent to the damage that has been done.

This review was published in the Canberra Times of 30.05.22 here. It is also on the author's blog here.