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Developing Photography:

A History of the Australian Centre for Photography 1973-2013– Toby Meagher, Research Paper–June 2013; Masters in Art Administration at COFA

Chapter four: The 1980s: Expanding the medium

The 1980s saw the emergence of a second-generation of artist-photographers. They were trained in Art Schools and Colleges of Advanced Education throughout the 70s and their concerns proved to be different from those artists of the previous decade (Ennis 1988b). There was a move away from the 'naturalism' that had dominated photographic practice, towards a growing concern for Postmodernism, particularly in Sydney, where the Biennale of Sydney and Perspecta exhibitions threw the spotlight on contemporary practice.

The ACP also experienced these winds of change.

Christine Godden continued as Director until 1982 and oversaw the moving of the Centre, in 1981, to its current location on Oxford Street, Paddington.

The gallery and workshop were now combined under a single management but there were limited changes to exhibition programming, with the Centre maintaining the direction it held through the course of late 70s.

Tamara Winikoff would then take the reins from 1982 through to 1985. Under her guidance Photofile began publication in 1983, firstly as a community newspaper, before evolving into a theory journal and finally into a magazine of contemporary photo-media and ideas. The ACP's ongoing funding was critical to its survival as there was also a growing sense that the center was losing relevance.

The drawback of the considerable 'American influence', on Australian photography in the 1970s, was that it called for a blanket adherence to the conceptual ideal of the photography's intrinsic or essential qualities. Those fighting for photography's artistic legitimacy struggled to accept new forms of expression, as they appeared to undermine the considerable effort that was going towards the establishment of photography as a legitimate artistic practice. There was a sense that manipulated work was an abolition of the medium (Ennis 1988b).

This inability to respond to the critical shifts and changing interpretations and uses of the medium, proved costly. The first signs that photography was fighting a losing battle came in the early 1980s when commercial galleries, dealing solely with photographs, began to close. By 1982 the exhibiting scene had changed dramatically with the closure of most commercial galleries that specialised solely in photography. The shift was felt particularly in Melbourne, with the closure in 1982 of Church St Photography Centre and the Photographers' Gallery (Marsh, 2010). The ripple effect was felt in Sydney. After the closure of Images Gallery, in Glebe (1982-84), the ACP became the sole Sydney venue dedicated to promoting photography (Ennis 1988b).

The ACP managed to avoid the fate of other dedicated spaces due, in the most part, to its continued State and Federal funding under successive governments. Unlike other exhibiting institutions, it did not have to rely on commercial activities and volunteer labor to ensure its survival (Marsh, 2010). Although it did suffer some related consequences. With the departure of Winikoff in early 1985, the Centre spent almost a year languishing without proper Directorship. Lawrence Bendle stepped in as acting Director for the year, but without strong and definitive leadership, the ACP appeared to have lost relevance and its financial situation looked precarious. By the time Denise Robinson took the reins in 1986, the Centre was suffering from a deficit and a declining public profile (due in part to the ongoing criticism sparked by the WOPOP/Anne-Marie Willis fracas of the late 1970s).

The appointment of Denise Robinson, came at a critical time for the Centre and her stewardship over the second half of the decade, transformed the ACP and breathed new life back into its program. The ACP began to significantly broaden its exhibition program, including video and new media works. By doing so, the ACP widened both its role and appeal. The Centre, under Robinson's Directorship, saw the importance of a malleable framework for exhibiting, which accounted for the speed with which photo-media art was being adapted and used, across multiple artistic forums.

By early 1988, Robinson had brought the Centre out of debt and established a strong sense of direction through a restructuring of the board, a transformed exhibition program and provocative curatorial focus (See Appendix B-xxvi).

Robinson arrived in Sydney after four years directing the George Paton Contemporary Arts Gallery, at Melbourne University Union, where her support of the avant-garde stimulated considerable public debate.

Robinson clarified the situation she found at the ACP in an interview with The Eastern Herald in 1988;

'When I came to the ACP... The emphasis had been on community-based and migrant-based work and a concern with the development of a social consciousness in the application of photography, but in terms of what was going on in the avant-garde, its program was very restrained.'

She also acknowledged the hangover from the American influence; 'Conditions and needs have changed substantially (over the last decade). We're not American and there's a different basis for producing work here.' Robinson had identified a need for a significant shake up of the ACP's operations.
1986 marked a clear change of direction for the exhibition program under Robinson's leadership, but there was pressure for change building from other directions as well.

In 1985, the video scene in Sydney had reached a point where there were enough people making video works to warrant a collective exhibition of recent works. Although Sydney already had a film festival, since the 1950s, video art came out of an entirely different trajectory (one of activism and experimental art that did not attract the art-film audience [Scanlines, 2012)). The low-resolution video and the difficulties it posed in achieving high-quality editing meant, that for the most part, filmmakers ignored the medium.

The two main art schools in Sydney, City Art Institute (now COFA, College of Fine Arts, UNSW) and Sydney College of the Arts, began teaching video in the early 1980s. In this context, 1985 saw the ACP hold the successful Scanlight: New Developments in Video Art (19 June - 14 July). Jill Scott (who had recently returned to Australia after spending many years establishing her name, in performance and video art, in San Francisco) along with Martin Jolly at the ACP, developed Scanlight as an early showing of video art.

But it was 1986 that saw a comprehensive exhibition program which better reflected the emerging concerns of contemporary photographic practices.
In that year the ACP held multiple exhibitions that significantly expanded its interpretation of the medium. Gold, held in May 1986, utilised an outdoor slide installation with three projectors, projecting images onto the exterior front wall of the ACP gallery and was accompanied by interior stills from the installation. In July, The Hand and the Photograph, exhibited drawings referring to photography. An instillation work by Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley was shown in October and perhaps, most importantly, the ACP took on a role as a key venue for the first Australian Video Festival in that same year - clearly redefining the scope of the Centre's interests.

Alongside Robinson's appointment, the Board of the ACP was also restructured, ensuring that at any given time, there would be 50 per cent representation of artists and women. The exhibition program began to reflect these changes with a dramatic increase in the representation of women. Over the course of the 1980s the Centre had three female Directors, numerous female curators (most notably Hellen Ennis, Fiona McDonald, Sally Couacaud and Bronwyn Clark-Coolee) and almost 50 per cent representation of women artists. Key exhibitions from this period included, Julie Brown-Rrap, Fiona Hall and Christine Godde (1986), Janina Green, Anne Wulff, Lindy Lee and Anne Zahalka (1987), Fiona Hall and Tracey Moffat (1989) and Carol Jerrems (1990) (See Appendix A for full listing of exhibitions).

The real effect of such a considered attempt to ensure adequate representation of women is hard to measure, but it is beyond doubt that the ACP, led by Robinson, in the second half of the 1980s, made a weighty contribution to the cause.

As the decade drew to a close one of the most significant developments across all artistic platforms was the increasing level of activity from minority groups, in particular, those from ethnic and Indigenous backgrounds. The ACP provided a critical role in representing these voices. The exhibition of Dennis del Favero's Scenario No. 5, in 1985, is just one example.

The exhibition of Tracey Moffatt'sSomething More, in August 1989, heralded the arrival of an Indigenous voice in Australian Photography. Moffat had previously exhibited with Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, the first institution to push the agenda of Indigenous artists working in urban areas. Moffat was a forerunner in a new community of Indigenous artists looking to establish a position 'from which to speak in, and to, the white art world' (Johnson, 1987). The ACP and Boomalli would go on to collaborate on multiple shows in the 1990s.

This 'Indigenous voice' in photography would grow to become one of the loudest of the next decade and the ACP would play a pivotal role in the representation of artists who were central to that cause.

Chapter Five: The 1990s: The re-birth of the ACP

Denise Robinson continued on as director into the early 1990s and maintained a focus on diverse practice by utilising the Centre's role as distinct from that of State-run museum or gallery. The Add Magic project of 1990 (launched in collaboration with the Biennale of Sydney) exemplified this. The project made use of 50 billboard sites throughout Australia and adorned them with works by six artists over a six-month period. The project blurred the lines between advertising and artistic practice and the billboards drew significant attention from the public and the media. In particular Maria Kozic is Bitch! (Maria Kozic, 1989), is now considered a key work from this project.

The ACP holds a long history of representing Indigenous issues in its exhibitions. The 1970s saw Jon Rhodes' Just Another Sunrise? and Carol Jerrems' documentary work on urban Indigenous campaigns for equal rights. Tracey Moffatt's first solo exhibition, Something More, was exhibited in 1989 (and went on to become one of the most important series of the decade). In the 1990s, this ongoing concern, combined with mounting social pressures, transferred into consistent representation of Indigenous photographers. This representation was not a conscious decision so much as a necessary reaction to the rising importance of Indigenous voices in Australian Photography.

In 1991, the ACP organised a major survey of the press photography of Mervyn Bishop. In Dreams was the first full-scale retrospective of Bishop's work and it was curated by Tracey Moffatt. A monograph of Bishop's career was published to coincide with the exhibition. In Dreams was an overwhelming success and it went on to tour nationally, and internationally, for almost a decade. The exhibition was instrumental in cementing Bishop's career as a pivotal influence on Indigenous photography and wider Australian visual culture.

The Bishop show marked a high-point for the ACP's history of working with Boomalli Aboriginal Artists' Co-operative, and the partnership allowed the show to tour the UK in 1994.1993 marked the United Nations Year of the World's Indigenous People and the ACP housed exhibitions of the Boomalli artists in support. With Hetti Perkins as curator, Brenda Croft exhibited The Big Deal is Black and Destiny Deacon showed Caste Offs. To coincide with the United Nation's initiative, the ACP also organised the international exhibition tour of Queensland artist, Leah King-Smith's, Patterns of Connection.

Deborah Ely, artist and art historian, took over the direction of the Centre in January 1992 amidst growing financial difficulties and the need to rethink the state of the ACP's permanent home. 1992 and 1993 saw significant internal changes that focused on financial restructuring in order to maintain independence and ensure the guarantee of ongoing government commitment. Planning for a much-needed redesign also began to take shape and a proposal for the construction of a cafe became central to the financial viability and sustainability of the centre.

By 1993, the ACP had reached a point in which it was no longer able to service the $1.5 million mortgage owed to the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation for the Oxford St site. A tipping point had been reached.

The ACP was performing poorly financially and yet needed to grow significantly in order to maintain its role as a key cultural institution. The Dobell Foundation agreed to halve the value of the ACP's loan to $750,000 and a profit sharing arrangement was agreed upon in which the Dobell Foundation and the ACP would share both the financial risk and the benefits that the planned redevelopment had proposed. The Foundation's decision alleviated the immediate pressure and allowed the ACP's financial situation to stabilise, enabling commencement of the major initiative to re-develop the site.

By September 1993, the Centre had closed operations on the Oxford St site in preparation for the re-development and much of the administrative efforts were placed into long term strategic planning and policy prioritisation.

The re-development efforts of 1994 did not travel smoothly. There were a series of unexpected setbacks that ranged from design problems, to Council planning restrictions and culminated in May, with the decision of the proposed cafe tenant to discontinue with the project. After six months of gallery closure, the Board and staff were forced to evaluate the enormity of the problem and conceded to only continue with a re-development of the workshop spaces.

The work was completed by August and the ACP moved closer to resuming normal operations. Under stringent financial controls, the financial position of the ACP had improved significantly, despite the disruptions of the workshop rebuild. By the end of 1994, the ACP had moved back into surplus and with the NSW Ministry for the Arts granting the Centre $50,000 towards the proposed refurbishment, things were again beginning to look promising.

In the space of 12 months, the convoluted negotiations and setbacks of the past five years, had been 'exchanged for cyclonic activity' (Anthony Bond, Chairman's report, 1995). The turning point came with the decision by Peter Collins, as the then Minister for the Arts, to approve an interest free loan of $300,000 to the ACP. The loan allowed for a realisation of the proposed new galleries and the construction of the street-front cafe.

The leasing of the cafe would then provide the primary means, by which the ACP would repay both the government loan and then begin efforts to purchase the site from the Dobell Foundation. By March 1996, the Premier Bob Carr had launched the new Gallery and the ACP restaurant, La Mensa had opened its doors. The exhibition program returned to a full schedule and years of planning and hard work had come to fruition.

In August 1997, Deborah Ely had resigned as Director to take up a new role at the Ministry for the Arts. The construction of the new building and the survival of the ACP over the very difficult years of the first half of the decade were credited, in the most part, to Ely's dedication and management skills.

She left the ACP with a secure operating base, both in terms of the building and funding sources. Blair French and other Staff members undertook the Directorship in an interim capacity at the conclusion of Ely's tenure. However the expanded galleries and workshop had given rise to a dramatic growth in the scale of the Centre's operations and exhibitions. A leader was needed to take control of a new Centre and drive it towards a new millennium.

Alasdair Foster was instated as Director, in May 1998 and he would go on to direct the ACP for the next 13 years. His time at the helm would establish the ACP as one of the busiest photography and contemporary art facilities in the country, culminating in the ACP being identified as 'one of the leadership organisations in Australian contemporary visual culture' and adopted as a major recipient under the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy of 2004 (Australia Council, 2004).

Foster immediately recognised the need to restructure the Centre's staffing, to better respond to the increased scale of operations. He introduced a management structure that brought to the ACP a revitalised vision and a new sense of coherence.

Three new management roles were introduced in 1999; Program Manager, Education Manager and Communications Manager and a new Strategic Vision was implemented, re-focusing on a single core objective; to enhance awareness and appreciation of photo-based art, with particular attention on innovation and creative edge. The increased scale saw annual attendances rise by 47 per cent in just a year. By 1999, NSW Ministry for the Arts funding had risen to $122,000 per annum, Australia Council funding stood at $94,350 per annum and additional Australia Council funding for Photofile was at $15,000.

The exhibition program expanded to reflect the overall growth of the Centre.

In the second half of the decade, the ACP began to establish stronger links with the National Gallery (due in a large part to Gael Newton's interest in the Centre), State Galleries and the private sector. The introduction of a Project Wall in the entrance to the Galleries provided a permanent space, dedicated to emerging artists.

The renovated workshop spaces resulted in a 60 per cent increase in course attendance, which translated directly to a financial surplus. Key exhibitions over this time continued to represent Indigenous photographers and issues. Notable examples include: Inheritance (1996) and Beyond the Sublime (1996) which featured works by Sandy Edwards, Fiona Hall, Lynne Roberts- Goodwin, Destiny Deacon, Susan Nakamarra Boko and Danielle Thompson. Breath of Life: Moments in Transit Towards Aboriginal Sovereignty (1997) continued to explore Indigenous themes and further exhibitions of new bodies of work by Destiny Deacon and Brenda Croft were also shown [Postcards from Mummy: The First Third of a life and In My Father's House, respectively). In 2000, Michael Riley's Cloud and Empire was shown at ACP and went on to successfully tour regionally over the next three years.

The Centre consolidated many of the various exhibitions of Indigenous photography from across the 1990s with the 2003 exhibition; Traffic- Crossing Currents in Indigenous Photomedia (including Indigenous artists from New Zealand and the Pacific) The show represented the works of practitioners, including Vernon Ah Kee, Destiny Deacon and Christian Thompson.

Perhaps the most important exhibition of the decade was the 1999, Signature Works - 25th Anniversary Exhibition, which included works from Fiona Hall, Bill Henson, Carol Jerrems, Maria Kozic, Tracey Moffatt, Max Pam, Patricia Piccinini, Jon Rhodes, Michael Riley, Anne Zahalka (See Appendix B-xxvii). The works were selected by 25 photographic curators, writers, artists and academics from around Australia, cementing the national reach of the Centre and casting light on its own history of exhibiting works which would come to be emblematic of their own period.

The end of the 1990s was marked by the rise of the Internet. The medium of photography was continuing to grow at an exponential rate and the dissemination of digital images, through the internet and the accessibility of digital photography, ensured the public demand for photo-media exhibition and education would continue to develop over the coming decade.

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Intro & Chapter 1   /   Chapters 2 & 3    /   Chapters 4 & 5    /   Chapters 6 & 7   /   bibliography   /  Appendices