Category Archives: Abstraction

Ballarat International Foto Biennale (BIFB)

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This past weekend saw the opening of the 10th Ballarat Internationale Foto Biennale. The overarching theme this year is “The Real Thing”, recognising the impact that digital, AI, NFTs and image manipulation are having on the visual arts in general, and the photographic medium in particular.

The highlight of the first weekend was the keynote presentation by Platon, one of the most high-profile and prolific portrait photographers of our age, famous for his images of political figures, popular icons, and social activists. Given that Platon works mostly with traditional 35mm film and captures living subjects, his work certainly deals with the “real” thing.

At the end of the first day, visitors were also treated to a Victorian magic lantern presentation, combining authentic analog apparatus, multi-media components and live performance. For audiences of the day, such events would have been their first encounter with moving images and projections – which we take for granted in our screen-obsessed culture.

As with any festival on this scale and duration, there is a wide range of work on display. This is especially so outside the Core Program, with the Outdoor and Open Programs taking on the challenging task of representing different aesthetics, styles, techniques, subject matter, and as such they reflect varying levels of quality and competence.

It wasn’t possible to see all of the exhibitions in the first two days – and some works don’t go on display until later in the program – but for me, the highlights beyond the major Platon show included: Stephen Dupont‘s happy accidents; Jon Setter‘s stunning abstract images of Ballarat; several of the works by regional photographers curated by Jeff Moorfoot; the scattered works by the Oculi Collective; and the display presented by the Australian Association of Street Photographers Inc.

Some exhibitions were less successful: I really wanted to engage with William Yang‘s work, but the unfocused curation and haphazard presentation undermined any appreciation of the images and their underlying narrative; Erik Johansson‘s highly stylised images are humorous and surreal, but they can also come across as very superficial, so we are left marvelling at the surface technique rather than any depth behind the work; and while it was nice to see some of Andy Warhol‘s original Polaroids, they were presented with very limited context, as if they were an afterthought (the fact that they are probably the earliest works in the whole festival may have something to do with them feeling out of place, as well as out of time).

It is easy to see how some photographers could get constrained, either by their subject matter, or by their technique. Working with self-imposed limitations should be positive. Using fewer tools can drive creativity (“less is more”). Having less time can result in better outcomes (“the first take is usually the best take”). Innovation comes from exploring our curiosity. Inventiveness is the result of challenging ourselves through problem-solving. However, an artist can reveal themselves to be a one-trick pony, or their technical expertise overwhelms the output (“form over substance”). Sometimes, the narrative or subject matter is more important than the quality of the image, but just as a crappy technique can impair a great image, a perfect technique cannot compensate for a poor composition.

The notion of “reality” prompts us to consider what is a photograph? The fact that most modern photos are captured on a smart phone rather then a camera simply confirms that not all photographic images need to be created using a dedicated physical device (think of photograms). And since most photos are digital rather than on film means we are not limited to think of photography as a combination of manual, chemical and mechanical processes.

However, some of the work on display does challenge the definition of “photography”, especially in the context of art. For example, an image can be surreal or satirical, but when does that stray into being fake news? Equally, even though professionals like Platon render their work in a digital environment during the post-production process, should a composite of stock images manipulated using Adobe Photoshop qualify as a work of photographic art (or is it a mere illustration)? And with the growth of AI tools to generate images (which raises questions of authorship, copyright and attribution), should their use be disclosed and identified (just as paintings, sculptures and other art works are catalogued by their materials, processes and editioning)?

In the early days of music CDs, the recording industry developed the “SPARS code”. Letter combinations such as “AAD”, “ADD”, and “DDD” are intended to inform listeners that the music has been recorded, mixed and mastered using either analog or digital processes and equipment. Perhaps something similar should be considered for photography and digital art?

Next week: Banking Blues (pt. 481)

Craft vs Creativity

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In a recent blog on Auckland, I mentioned seeing some Maori artifacts or Taonga during a gallery tour. The curator had mentioned that these objects raise questions of whether they are art, or craft. Does the distinction matter? Not necessarily, but I think it’s important to understand the difference between craft (largely skills-based) and art (largely aesthetically-driven). Often these concepts overlap, and are sometimes misconstrued, which in turn influences how we attach value, appreciation, importance and significance to particular objects.

Anton Gerner, A Cabinet With No Front Or Back 2019, Fiddleback Blackwood, Celery Top Pine. (Image sourced from Craft Victoria)

What often gets viewed as “pure” art is more a result of design, technique and skill – attributes which are more usually associated with craft (or “applied” art). Indeed, it is noticeable how viewers seem to appreciate “effort” over “creativity”. A great number of exhibitions I see in contemporary art galleries are more about illustration, decoration and process – and it’s as if the time taken to create the work or the complexity of the object is more important than the actual aesthetic outcome.

On the other hand, a lot of work that is assigned to the category of “craft” is capable of sitting alongside sculptures and 3-D work in an art gallery. Equally, a lot of work (especially in the fields of ceramics, textiles and jewellery) has neither the aesthetic form to be considered as art, nor the functional form to be regarded as craft.

For me, craft involves considered decisions about the choice of material, the design and production process, plus the intended function (even if the latter is only for decorative purposes). Whereas art is usually undertaken for the purpose of arriving at an intended creative outcome, with the choice of materials etc., often being secondary to the final aesthetic result.

Both art and craft can be seen in cultural, social and even political terms. They are also informed by context and narrative. But successful art should convey more creativity than applied craft or technique. And craft is often diminished if it fails to conveys some practical element of function – what’s the point of a beautiful jug if it cannot pour water?

Two recent exhibitions underline how the distinction between “art” and “craft” is often blurred: the Victorian Craft Awards, and MasterMakers at RMIT Gallery. In the Craft Victoria display, most of the pieces had no real practical purpose (other than decoration); yet, in terms of achieving an aesthetic goal, it felt like this was subservient to the materials and the process. While in the RMIT exhibition, there was an emphasis on the materials, plus an acknowledgement that even very technical processes can also result in objects that offer aesthetic pleasure – where form and function truly combine, and are inherently equal in the work. (The Anton Gerner furniture at Craft Victoria also manages to achieve that combination.)

We still don’t really know why the first cave paintings were made – were they an early form of graffiti? do they tell a story or capture events for posterity? were they the result of experimenting with pigments or dyeing techniques? or were they the result of some existential desire to give rise to a form of human expression? or simply to have something nice to look at? But we know we can appreciate them for their aesthetic level as well as their technique – in addition to their historical significance.

Next week: Notes from Phuket

 

MoMA vs SFMOMA

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As regular readers of this blog may have come to realise, any opportunity I have during my overseas travels, for business or pleasure, I always like to visit the local public art galleries. Apart from providing a cultural fix, these institutions can reveal a lot about current fashions, curatorial trends and even technology adoption in the elite world of marquee museums. Earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to visit MoMA in New York, and SFMOMA in San Francisco.

Mario Bellini – Olivetti TCV 250 Video Display Terminal (1966) – MoMA New York (Gift of the manufacturer) – Photo by Rory Manchee

Both museums are housed in contemporary buildings which, in keeping with a noticeable trend among modern galleries and museums, emphasise their vertical structure. Compared to say, the 18th/19th century museums of London, Paris and Berlin (with their long, languid and hall-like galleries), these 21st century constructs force us to look upwards – both physically, and perhaps metaphorically, as they aspire to represent “high” art in a modern context?

Although I have been to MoMA many times before, there is always something new to discover among the touring exhibitions and permanent collections. On this latest visit, there were four standout displays: Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age (see illustration above); Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait; Max Ernst: Beyond Painting; and Stephen Shore.

Apart from the latter, there is clearly a statement being made within the format of “Title/Name – colon – concept/context/subtext”. Stephen Shore is obviously an exception to this curatorial technique. Here is a photographer, whose name I was not familiar with, but whose work seemed both familiar (everyday images and popular icons) and exotic (otherworldly, outsider, alien); yet also pedestrian (repetitive, mundane) and alienating (elements of the macabre and voyeuristic).

The Thinking Machines display threw up some interesting juxtapositions: most of the devices and the works they produced were artisanal in approach – one-off pieces, requiring detailed and skilled programming, and not the mass-produced, easily replicated works we associate with most digital processes these days. Plus, even when the outputs were generated by a computational approach, the vagaries of the hardware and software meant the works were more likely to produce chance results, given the large role that analog processes still played in these systems-defined creations.

Louise Bourgeois’ work can still challenge our sensibilities, especially when conveyed through her lesser-known works on paper, even though many of the images are familiar to us from her sculptures and installation pieces (the latter represented here in the form of one of her giant spiders).

The exhibition of works on paper by Max Ernst also reveal another aspect of the artist’s oeuvre, although unlike Bourgeois, I feel there is greater affinity with his more formal paintings because, despite the different media in which he worked, there is a consistency to his image making and his visual language.

Across the country in San Francisco, this was the first time I had been to SFMOMA, so in the available time, I tried to see EVERYTHING, on all 6 levels. But I still manged to miss one entire floor, housing the late 19th century/early 20th century permanent collection.

The main exhibitions were Robert Rauschenberg: Erasing The Rules; Soundtracks;  Walker Evans; Approaching American Abstraction; and Louis Bourgeois Spiders.

So, less of the colon-delineated concepts compared to MoMA, and more literal titles – and you have to think that photographers, like Shore and Evans, don’t merit these sub-textual descriptions, because with photographers, what you see is what you get?  On the other hand, with Bourgeois’ Spiders, it contains what it says on the tin – giant spider sculptures.

I’d seen the Rauschenberg exhibition earlier this year at the Tate Modern in London, as it’s actually a touring show curated by MoMA itself. Seeing these (now familiar) works in another setting revealed aspects that I hadn’t appreciated before – such as the similarities between Rauschenberg’s collages and combines, and the mixed media works of Max Ernst and other Surrealists, for example.

The Evans exhibition was an exhaustive (and at times exhausting) career retrospective. In addition to many of his iconic images of crop farmers during the Great Depression, there were more urbane/mundane images of shop window displays, merchandising and branding – not too dissimilar to some of Shore’s serial photo essays.

Wandering through (or approaching…) the American Abstraction display was like immersing oneself in a who’s who of modern US art: Brice Marden, Sol Le Wit, Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Cy Twombly, Adolph Gottlieb, Morris Louis, Sam Francis, Ellsworth Kelly, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin, Sean Scully, Frank Stella, Joan Mitchell…. It struck me that despite the differences among these artists, and their individual mark making and contrasting visual languages, the collection was very much of a whole – the familiarity of many of these works, in close proximity, felt very comforting, even though the original intent was potentially to shock, challenge or disrupt. That’s not to say the works no longer have any impact, it’s just that our tastes and experiences have led us to adapt to and accommodate these once abrasive images.

Finally Soundtracks was probably the weakest of all the exhibitions I saw, pulling together a mish-mash of mostly sculptural and installation works embodying some form of audio element. My interest in this vein of work probably started when I saw the exhibition, “Ecouter Par Les Yeux” many years ago in Paris.

Despite a few banal pieces (too literal or pedestrian in their execution) this current incarnation had some individually engaging and landmark pieces: namely, Celeste Boursier-Mougenot’s “Clinamen”, a version of which has been on display at Melbourne’s NGV in recent times; and Brian Eno’s “Compact Forest Proposal”, which I only know of through its audio component – so here was a chance to walk through the fully realised, and dream-like installation.

As 2017 draws to a close, Content in Context will be taking a (much-needed) break for the holidays. Having made 8 overseas trips in the past 12 months, the author is looking forward to spending some down-time closer to home. Many thanks to all the people who have made 2017 such a truly memorable year for me – for all sorts of personal and professional reasons. You know who you are. Normal service will resume in January, and have a safe, peaceful and uplifting festive season.