REVIEW
Re-constructed Vision
Contemporary work with photography 25th July-23rd August, 1981
REVIEW by Arthur McIntyre
Pubished The Age, Friday 21 August 1981
Gael Newton, curator of photography at the NSW Art Gallery, has mounted a refreshingly innovative exhibition, ‘Re-constructed Vision’. She has made an intelligent selection of artists working in a variety of fields, linked by their use of manipulated photography. In her explanatory catalogue notes Ms Newton discusses diverse attitudes to modern photography and its roles in art. Conventional, pure, black-and-white and color prints were in favor until the 1970s, when a revival of interest in the attitudes of the earlier Pictorialists took place.
“Manipulation has been part of photography since its invention,” explains Ms Newton, making specific references to the achievements of Julia Margaret Cameron in the 1870s and the use of montage by Man Ray in the 1920s. Manipulated photography is becoming an increasingly popular art form in Australia as more photographers reject the “slice-of- life” stance. |
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| Bea Maddock, #33 Caliper 1974 |
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The catalogue states that “the criteria for selection of works sought the creation of imagery in which a significant degree of intervention had occurred between an existing reality and the final print”. Assemblages, montage and collage techniques in many works emphasise hand-work rather than the photographic origins.
Some of the most intriguing works are those of Micky Allan, Warren Breninger and' Cathy Brooks. It is difficult to define Breninger’s ‘Expulsion of Eve Series’ in which a female head expressing agony and/or ecstasy is repeated. Initially the works were silver gelatin photographs over which color pigment was hand-worked, outlines incised, pencil used for added graphic interest and areas torn from the surface. Technical and conceptual ambiguity make for tantalising viewing.
Ms Allan’s eight silver gelatin photographs are of students from a school for the disabled in Victoria. The slightly macabre subject matter is made more palatable by a quite painterly use of water- color and gouache in seductive, jolly colors. The theme of Cathy Brooks’s two contributions is the plight of the common working man ‘4 am at a standstill — at a standstill, 4 am’ is a collage of silver gelatin photographs with hand-colored watered or background. Ms Brooks seems to be saying that the programming of lives destroys the spirit of the individual.
Some outstanding examples of the use of photographic techniques in printmaking are those of Bea Maddock and Peter Charuk. Etching and photo etching techniques are incorporated in Ms Maddock’s chilling image entitled ‘Caliper’, possibly the most disturbing work in the exhibition. Charuk’s ‘Visions of Childhood’ are from a hand-bound album of 12 paired photo-etchings on six sheets of heavy paper. These prints possess a mysterious dream-like quality and exploit images of a potentially Freudian significance.
Photographic records of performance artists at work challenge conventional definitions of the role of photography in art. John Delacour’s cibachrome color photographs and silver gelatin photographs of Mike Parr’s ‘Black Box/Theatre of Self Correction Part One, Performance One to Six’ (1979) are artfully composed and completely satisfying as artworks in their own right. They exist as tangible object evidence of Parr’s perfomance pieces, which are otherwise ephemeral.
This exhibition shows us works by mostly younger contemporary artists, many of whom are breaking long-held rules. To quote Gael Newton’s catalogue conclusion: “Historically it may be that photography has arrived at a point where its relationship with contemporary art as a whole should be examined and the field or view opened up to the consideration of all uses of the medium."
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