Photofile 86 - Innocence UNCuT:

Editor: Ashley Crawford

When colonial-era scientists sent a platypus to England it was considered a cleverly devised practical joke. What kind of mammal lived in the water and had a duck’s beak? In many ways Australia, both in its very nature and in its culture can be looked at the same way; a bizarre melting pot of desert and forest, of cultures from here and afar.

Australia, in this issue of Photofile, is portrayed in numerous ways. Brendon Lee’s ‘remaking’ of aspects of Australian culture suggests just how malleable our own self-perception can be. As Veronica Tello notes of Lee’s imagery: “There is a distinct ethnographical quality in Lee’s work: an ability to excavate and sieve through difficult yet essential aspects of the Australian character, facets of which, Lee believes, have long been discarded.”

While Paul Batt’s work is in essence a commentary on surveillance in contemporary society his imagery also acts as an illustration of the palimpsest of cultural backgrounds that Australia carries. The genesis of the works in this issue has a somewhat mundane birth – as Batt says, the simple “observation of the constant parade of people stopping at the service station opposite my apartment.” But the results say multitudes about our racial perceptions and suspicions.

One place that will never see a parade of people is Lake Eyre. From Batt’s somewhat claustrophobic inner-city aspect, we travel to the great salt lake as captured by Murray Fredericks. Here both sky and surface meld in delirious aquamarine slashed by a bright and vibrant crimson as the sun sets over the perfect horizontal divide of heaven and earth. At other times the heat haze eradicates the horizon line entirely, creating a other-worldly cloud-like minimalist planet seemingly disconnected from any earthly environment. Almost terrifying in their minimalism, Fredericks captures the extremes of Australia’s natural environment.

Terence Hogan also uses nature as a springboard, in essence the gradual drying out of his inner-suburban garden during Victoria’s ongoing year of heat. He documents, with intimate detail, the mesmerising shifts of one small patch of garden detritus.

And as we know all too well, this dry detritus is the stuff of fire, one of Australia’s most potent weapons against human settlement. Fire and its aftermath are at the core of Samantha Small’s chilling works, what Damian Smith describes as “Gothic capitulation.”

“...in choosing a subject, which in essence is one of darkest domestic horror, indeed there is nothing to compare with death by immolation, Small has created artworks both horrific and poetic,” Smith writes.

“Horrific and poetic” could also apply to the works by our cover artist, Van Sowerwine. As Darren Tofts writes in this issue: Sowerwine’s work “synaesthetically shortcircuits our comfortable, cathartic distance from the character as our gaze becomes something far more intimate, invoking the physical, consoling caress of touch. We have gone beyond the valley of the dolls.”

The tendency of Australian artists to dwell in dark places of the imagination is perhaps unsurprising when one considers where we live – a land of desert and fire. A vision, perhaps, of hell: Samantha Small’s burnt-out home, Murray Fredericks’ barren, featureless void. And yet in these harsh and rugged environs we can carve out images of beauty and poetry.

Ashley Crawford

Regulars:

• Editorial
• Debut: Sonia Payes by Melissa Amore
• Previews: Lou Hubbard by Amy Marjoram
• Previews: John Bodin by Ashley Crawford
• Rant: The B Factor by Ashley Crawford

Features:

• Smoke Gets in My Eyes: Gothic Capitulation in the Work of Samantha Small, Pat Foster & Jen Berean by Damian Smith
• Everything You've Got: The Body in Recent Japanese Photography by Lesley Chow
• Body Trouble: Interview with Michiko Kasahara by Lesley Chow
• Meaning in the Void: Murray Fredericks' Mission by Ashley Crawford

Portfolios:

• Hoon Bricolage: Brendan Lee by Veronica Tello
• Innocence Uncut: Van Sowerwine by Darren Tofts
• Everyone Is a Suspect: Paul Batt by Ashley Crawford
• (out the back): Terence Hogan by Kirsten Rann

Exhibition Reviews:

• Dark Dreams + Fluorescent Flesh, SASA Gallery, South Australian School of Art
• Visual Reminiscence: Anne Wilson, Arc1 Gallery, Melbourne

Book Reviews:

• Facades by Tom Fantl
• Harold Cazneaux by Tom Fantl
• Half Light by Anne Kirker
• Portraits From a Land Without People by Maurice O'Riordon
• Maslen and Mehra by Maurice O'Riordan

IMAGE © Van Sowerwine Sophie 2005