Friday Round Up - 6 June, 2014

This week on Friday Round Up four new exhibitions for Melbourne; more news from the Auckland Festival of Photography; and an interview with Italian photo-artist Valentina Vannicola in the new Q&A section above. Plus Head On Photo Festival closes this weekend in Sydney and Australian high-end photography book publisher T&G Publishing launches Jean-Marc Caimi’s new book Daily Bread in Sweden and Japan.

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Exhibition: - Melbourne

Three Shows at Edmund Pearce 

Christian Pearson – Industrial Graffiti

Photographer Christian Pearson, who is from Melbourne, says the works that comprise "Industrial Graffiti" aim to convey an “unconscious aesthetic created by labourers, technicians and engineers during the construction of our urban built environment”. 

(C) All images Christian Pearson

Defining the concept of ‘industrial graffiti’ Pearson says his images capture what appear as random markings on industrial sites, squiggles, letters, numbers, scrawled in different colours on metal, wood, plastic and over paint.

“The marking is an ephemeral part of a process that ultimately leads to the creation of a new, functional and aesthetic objective,” Pearson states. Like some graffiti, these markings appear defacements when in fact they are codes that guide those erecting our cities. This exhibition is an interesting visual study on a form of communication known to few.

Also on show at Edmund Pearce:

Tim Gresham – Reflect

Shannon McGrath - Fraction

Edmund Pearce
Level 2, Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street,
Melbourne
Until 28 June

Exhibition: Melbourne
Tom Williams – Portside

(C) Tom Williams

(C) Tom Williams

Often the most powerful photographic stories are those you find in your own backyard. Tom Williams has spent years abroad capturing other cultures and building a career in documentary portraiture. On returning to Australia and the town of Wollongong, (near Sydney) Williams turned his focus on the local population and how the failing industrial economy was impacting residents.

In his exhibition “Portside” are images taken in Port Kembla and Wollongong, both places that have made their mark through the mining and shipping industries. Williams says he found Wollongong a shadow of its former self with those formerly engaged in industrial jobs now joining the ranks of the unemployed.

“The postcard coastline parallels one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Australia,” he says. “As a photographer I’m always asking: what do surfaces say about what’s hidden behind them? What attracts me to making portraits is the brief and intense interaction that results in an image that speaks of the subject, the picture-taker; and sometimes, the place. In the end you can only try to guess at the magnificent complexity and consciousness beneath the outer layer – this is something that keeps us looking at photographs.”

Colour Factory
409-429 Gore Street
Fitzroy

Book Launch:

Jean-Marc Caimi – Daily Bread

I’ll say it upfront. I am biased as I was the editor on this new book by Jean-Marc Caimi “Daily Bread”, and of course I love it. Publisher Gianni Frinzi of T&G Publishing has once again done a brilliant job bringing this book to life. It launched in Sweden last week at Caimi’s exhibition of the same name. You can buy Daily Bread by following the link here.

Daily Bread also launches at the exhibition’s opening in Tokyo at Reminders Photography Stronghold (RPS) on June 14. Caimi is the fourth recipient of the RPS Grant, which he was awarded for Daily Bread.

Launch: Saturday, June 14 at 4:00pm
2-38-5
Higashi-mukojima
Sumida, Tokyo 131-0032

Festival:
Head On Photo Festival

(C) Alison Stieven-Taylor

Head On Photo Festival ends this weekend. Check out the website to see what shows are still on

Showing Now for Head On

Valentina Vannicola's Dante's Inferno - until 8 June 

Click on the Feature Articles tab above to read Alison Stieven-Taylor's interview with Valentina about this meticulous and thought-provoking work. 

(C) Valentina Vannicola/OnOffPicture

Festival:
Selected Exhibitions – Part Two:
Auckland Festival of Photography
Signature Exhibitions - Alison Stieven-Taylor’s Selection

Last week Photojournalism Now previewed some of the exhibitions on show in the first week of the Auckland Festival of Photography. This week Photojournalism Now takes a look at two exhibitions – one showing now and the other opening 12 June. Both present very different approaches to this year’s Signature Series’ theme -memory. There is also a photo-gallery with images from Rob Gilhooly’s “Suicide Forest” and Emil McAvoy’s “Reflections on Lily Pond”.

Showing Now

Auschwitz Revisited

(C) Bronek Kozka

Melbourne-based photographer Bronek Kozka’s “Auschwitz Revisited” is a contemporary portrait of a landscape that will be remembered in the annals of history as the site of one of the darkest moments of humankind. "Standing in the bitter cold looking to a foggy horizon and seeing what looked like columns, but they were chimneystacks for as far as I could see. One chimney, one hut...the magnitude of the horror dawned on me at this moment. I didn’t want to take any photographs at first...however at some point I decided to shoot. It was here that the most frightening and daunting revelation occurred to me. How close my family was to Auschwitz...how all could have ended here." This is how Kozka describes his experience visiting Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where he found himself on a personal exploration into his Polish heritage. His black and white images weave his own story with the somberness of the landscape and its open wounds.

(C) Bronek Kozka

Auschwitz Revisited
Bronek Kozka
4-21 June
Elam George Fraser Gallery
University of Auckland
25a Princes Street
Auckland

Opens 12 June

Unruly Memoirs: Nature Fights Back

(C) Jane Zusters

In “Unruly Memoirs: Nature Fights Back” Christchurch-based artist Jane Zusters examines the aftermath of that city’s recent devastating earthquakes in a series of “geopolitical montages”. In this collection of digital images Zusters combines images of external and internal spaces to pose unlikely realms where the ceiling of a library may be blue sky and clouds, or the wall to a bedroom open to the street. These images while somewhat surreal are also situated in reality, reminders of the impermanence of structures and their perceived safety especially when faced by the power of Mother Nature. 

(C) Jane Zusters

12-28 June
Sanderson Contemporary Art
122 Jervois Road
Herne Bay

Suicide Forest
Rob Gilhooly

(C) Rob Gilhooly

4-17 June
Hum Salon
123 Grafton Road
Grafton
(Read last week's blog post for the story on this exhibition)

Emil McAvoy
Reflections on Lily Pond

(C) Emil McAvoy

11 June - 21 June
ELAM Projectspace Gallery, Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland, 20 Whitaker Place

Photoforum: History in The Taking; 40 years (6-28 June)
Gus Fisher Gallery
74 Shortland Street

For details visit Auckland Festival of Photography