Friday Round Up - 24th April, 2015

This week Friday Round Up focuses on the 6th edition of Sydney’s Head On Photo Festival, which is Australia’s largest photographic event. Head On opens next Friday 1st May. Today's preview features some of the international shows included in the Featured program. Next week it’s the Aussies turn.

Feature:
Head On Photo Festival

John Malkovich as Andy Warhol from Sandro Miller's exhibition 

Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich: Homage to Photography Masters 

exclusive to Head On Photo Festival

The Head On Festival Hub
The biggest innovation this year is the introduction of the Head On Festival Hub, a central location in the heart of Sydney where photographers can mingle, and everyone can participate in exhibitions, screenings, talks and workshops over the first ten days of the festival. This is a fantastic idea and will make it much easier for visitors to see a host of diverse exhibitions in the one venue. I'm looking forward to checking it out, along with other exhibitions I've earmarked as must sees - check out my selection below.

Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig says, “The Hub is where you can drop in, talk about photography, and see photography. It provides the opportunity to have a social interaction with a whole lot of people”.

Located in Sydney Lower Town Hall the Hub will host nine of the Featured Exhibitions for the festival as well as screenings, artist talks, and workshops. Talks will be held during the day at lunchtimes to encourage city workers to drop in. Screenings will run constantly throughout the day.

The Hub is also the venue for the opening of the Festival on 1st May where the winners of the Head On Photo Awards, which are the flagship of the Festival, will be announced next Friday. This year there are five categories - the coveted Head On Portrait Prize plus Landscape, Moving Image, Mobile, and the new category for 2015, Student.

There’s also a program of talks, workshops and masterclasses including:

Italian photographer Alessandro Penso masterclass - Using Photography for Social Change: From Concept to Completion – click here for details

Ben Lowy, Marvi Lacar and Michael Robinson Chavez – Creating and Packaging Your Visual Story – click here for details

Sandro Miller (Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich) will present on how to shoot portraiture - click link for details  

Panel discussion at the Hub on Sunday 3 May 4.30-6.30pm – Staying Relevant as a Photography Professional. Panelists are Jim Dooley, from Alexia Foundation, photographers Sandro Miller, Matt Willis, Alessandro Penso, Daniel Schuman, portfolio expert Sally Brownbill and Alison Stieven-Taylor.

The International Exhibitions - My Pick

Between Heaven and Earth - Shunzan Fan 

Chinese photographer Shunzan Fan seeks to capture the importance of the dreamscape. In this series Between Heaven and Earth he features staged pictures of everyday people who pose in front of 'their dream'. Shot in black and white and then manually coloured, these images cross cultural boundaries to show that all of us have hopes and dreams no matter our circumstance or nationality. 

Until 16 May
Stanley Street Gallery
1/52-54 Stanley St
Darlinghurst

Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters - Sandro Miller 

Diane Arbus Twins

American photographer Sandro Miller has created an amazing collections of photographs paying homage to some of the great photographers of the past century. Enlisting the help of his friend, actor John Malkovich, Miller has painstakingly recreated iconic images such as Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, John Lennon and Meryl Streep. This is an extraordinary collection. Don't miss it.

Richard Avedon Beekeeper


Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother


Annie Liebovitz John and Yoko


Annie Liebovitz Meryl Streep


Herb Ritts Jack Nicholson


Bert Stern Marilyn Roses

28 April to 17 May
Black Eye Gallery
3/138 Darlinghurst Rd
Darlinghurst 

You can read my interview with Sandro Miller in today's Australian Financial Review 

Iraq Perspectives Windows - Benjamin Lowy 

Shot between 2003 and 2008 through the window of a Humvee in Iraq, Lowy's images capture fragments of daily life giving an insight into a world where war and violence is not the only story. 

1- 17 May
aMBUSH Gallery
Level 3, Central Park,
28 Broadway,
Chippendale

1in20 - curated by Marvi Lacar 

1in20 is a project US photographer Marvi Lacar began last year with her husband photojournalist Ben Lowy; a mental health initiative born of her own journey with acute clinical depression. 

1in20 is aimed at educating and destigmatising mental illness through creative storytelling and the exhibition consist of a series of Instagram posts, complete with captions and reader comments. Contributions are from those who have dealt with the gamut of human experiences from depression and suicide to sexual abuse, PTSD and the loss of a child. Adding an interactive element, visitors to the exhibition are invited to add their own comments to the prints. 

Cara Anna

Echosight

Erin Mencher

Maurice Decaul

Kerry Payne

1-10 May
Sydney Lower Town Hall
Head On Festival Hub
483 George Street
Sydney

The Driest Seasons: California's Dust Bowl 

- Michael Robinson Chavez 

California is in the grip of crippling drought. In the Central Valley, which is home to an agriculture industry worth billions towns have run out of water and farms have been abandoned as fields lay parched. Chavez’ series, shot over 12 months, examines the effect that this historic drought is having on the people who work the fields and run the farms. 

Until 31 May
Customs House (level 2)
31 Alfred St
Circular Quay

In Brief:

Alessandro Penso - Lost Generation

at Istituto Italiano di Cultura

Naoto Ijichi

Tokyo Gardens 

at The Japan Foundation Gallery 

Sebastian Liste - The New Culture of Violence in Latin America presented by the Alexia Foundation at The Hub 

VII Photo – Smile
at The Hub


(C) Alexandra Boulat

(C) Ashley Gilbertson

(C) Franco Pagetti

(C) Gary Knight

Jonathan May - Desert Ink 

at GAFFA 

Gohaf Dashti – Iran 

at ACP

Head On Featured Exhibitions - to find our more see the website here

Head On Photo Festival

1-31 May

Sydney - various venues

Friday Round Up - 17 April, 2015

This week on Friday Round Up it's all about photography and climate change, with the first Art+Climate=Change Festival to be held in Melbourne featuring a range of exhibitions.

Climate Change Photos* - My Pick:

Photo Courtesy WWF*

(C) Nacho Doce/Reuters*

Drought Australia 2007 (C) Rodney Dekker*

Festival:

ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015

This inaugural festival, presented by CLIMARTE, features 25 exhibitions as well as keynote lectures and public forums.

The Arts have long played a role in recording the human condition and its relationship to nature. As debate around what to do about climate change continues to be bogged down in politics, artists around the world are uniting to bring the issue wider attention.

Earlier this year we saw the launch of #Everydayclimatechange, a movement of photographers keen to draw focus on the perils of doing nothing about environmental degradation.

Now it’s ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 presented by CLIMARTE: arts for a safer climate, an independent charity founded by Australians Guy Abrahams, Fiona Armstrong and Deborah Hart. All three are passionate about enlisting the arts to help affect cultural change and they've brought together a formidable program to engage the community.

The intention of ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 is to “inform, engage and inspire, delivering an expansive and stimulating series of events that can help lead us towards a creative, just and sustainable future.” The Festival's official dates are 11 April to 17 May, but many exhibition are on longer - see below. 

Keynote speaker: David Buckland

The University of Melbourne is the Principal Knowledge Partner of Climarte’s program and will host a keynote lecture by David Buckland of Cape Farewell who will "narrate 14 years of Cape Farewell’s ambition to place climate centre stage. Using the notion of expedition as a model to interrogate the future, Buckland will showcase some of the art produced by over 320 artists who have risen to the climate challenge; and visioned, through their creative endeavour, why we must engage in building transformative, dynamic and sustainable societies." This lecture is free, but you must register. 

ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 - Exhibitions

In Debt: Saving Seeds 

(C) Dave Jones

(C) Steven Rhall

Photographers Dave Jones and Steven Rhall (above) respond to the Australian Grains Genebank

24 April - 21 June

Grassy Woodlands

(C) Caroline Young
Until 27 July 2015

Both the above exhibitions are on at Centre For Contemporary Photography
404 George Street, Fitzroy

Fresh! 

(C) Chris Massey

Craft, 31 Flinders Lane, Melbourne
3 April – 30 May 2015
(Mixed media exhibition)

Nature/Revelation

(C) Ansel Adams The Tetons and theSnakeRiver Wyoming 1942

(C) Berndnaut Smilde, Nimbus D'Aspremont 2012

Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

800 Swanston Street, Parkville
Until 5 July
(Mixed media exhibition)

The Paper Canary, The Derwent Project, 

and the Hanging Garden 

(C) David Stephenson and Martin Walch 

MARS Gallery, 7 James Street, Windsor
30 April – 24 May

Earth Matters: Contemporary Photographers 

in the Landscape

(C) Chris Laing

(C) Les Walkling

(C) Peter Eastway

(C) Tony Hewitt


(C) Chris Thompson

Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Rd, Wheelers Hill
Until 3 May 2015

Chris Jordan – Intolerable Beauty: 

Facing the Mirror of Mass Consumption 

(C) All image Chris Jordan

Sophie Gannon Gallery, 2 Albert Street, Richmond
28 April – 9 May 2015

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

(C) Marjolijn Dijkman, Theatrum Orbis Terraru’, 2005-ongoing 

West Space
Level 1, 225 Bourke St, Melbourne, VIC 3000
Until 9 May 2015

Discounting the Future

(C) David Buckland and Amy Balkin, Discounting the Future, Ice Texts Series, 2010

Melbourne School of Design, Dulux Gallery
Ground Level, Melbourne School of Design Building (133), Spencer Road,
The University of Melbourne
Until 10 May 2015

Rosemary Laing: Weathering

(C) All images Rosemary Laing

Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen
Until 31 May 2015

* These images are not part of the festival