Photofile: Contemporary Photomedia + Ideas, Issue

CONTEMPORARY PHOTOMEDIA + IDEAS
83 WINTER 2008
83
KRISTIAN BURFORD
Aust $12.50 NZ $15
WINTER 2008
PF83_COVER.indd 1
BABELSWARM IN SECOND LIFE//VISCERAL VOYEUR: HELEN PYNOR
//CHARLES GREEN & LYNDELL BROWN IN THE WAR ZONE
LIPS & LASHES:PETA CLANCY//HARI HO’S WHITE CROSS BLACK LAND
6/3/08 6:03:28 PM
83
REGULARS
20
34
08 Editorial
10 Third Degree: The new director of the Monash Gallery
of Art, Jason Smith, is brought in for questioning.
12 Previews: a critical appraisal of some of the upcoming
events nationally and internationally
14 Debut: discover Joan Cameron-Smith’s Houses of Thought
16 Profile: The adventurous approach of the Queensland Centre for Photography
20 Interview: Charles Green & Lyndell Brown in the war zone.
60 Points of View: Four perspectives on Hari Ho’s White Cross Black Land
80 Rant: Darren Tofts gets cranky with the digerati
FEATURES
26 BABELSWARM: Kirsten Rann goes into Second Life
56 Prizes, prizes, prizes: Martin Jolly investigates the
plethora of photography prizes across Australia
PORTFOLIOS
34
40
44
48
52
Lips & Lashes: Peta Clancy by Ashley Crawford
The Presence of Absence: Ben Cauchi by Erika Wolf
Visceral Voyeur: Helen Pynor by Ashley Crawford
The Erotic Imagination: Kristian Burford by Jan Tumlir
Behind the Masks: Jacqui Stockdale by Lesley Chow
REVIEWS
26
65 Exhibitions: A Century in Focus: South Australian Photography 1840s-1940s
at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide / Motion Pictures at the Perth
Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth / Christian Marclay at the Australian
Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne / Paris Photo at the Carrousel du
Louvre, Paris / Salvatore Panatteri; Untitled (to Dan Flavin) at H29, Brussels /
Generation C at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney /
Brisbane Sound at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane
76 Books: Helen Ennis: Photography and Australia /
Craig Golding Surf Club / Laurence Aberhart: Aberhart /
Matt Hoyle: Encounters with the strange and unexplained
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44
52
4 PHOTOFILE
Peta Clancy, Lips 2, 2006
C-Type Print, 80x57cm.
Courtesy the artist and thirtyseven
degrees contemporary fine art gallery.
Peta Clancy, Lashes 3, 2006
C-Type Print, 80x54cm.
Courtesy the artist and thirtyseven
degrees contemporary fine art gallery.
CLANCY
BY ASHLEY CRAWFORD
L A S H E S + L I PS
PETA
IN DAVID CRONENBERG’S 1983 CLASSIC SCI-FI HORROR
FLICK VIDEODROME WE ARE SENSUALLY ASSAULTED WITH
DEBORAH HARRY’S CATHODE-RAY LIPS POUTING THROUGH
A TELEVISION SCREEN. IT IS A DEEPLY DISTURBING IMAGE,
AS THOUGH THE TELEVISION, HAVING CONSUMED HARRY,
HAS COME TO LIFE IN GROTESQUE EXTENSION OF AN
ADVERTISEMENT FOR REVLON LIPSTICK.
In part, Cronenberg captures the obsession with surface that
such marketing for lipsticks, powders, scrubs and creams
engages – an alchemists dream for the veneer of the flesh.
Such advertising is but one of the myriad sources Peta
Clancy embraces in her work. “All the surfaces of the skin look
so perfect in magazines!” she says. “We are a culture obsessed
by youth and perfect surfaces of the skin. These surfaces are
incredibly smooth and perfect! The images are very seductive,
but so unreal.”
34 PHOTOFILE
It is this balance between the real – the almost grotesquely
cropped imagery focusing on the flesh – and the unreal – the
tribalistic markings on that flesh – that make Clancy’s work
such an uneasy balancing act between horror and beauty.
The work has been informed by the ways the surfaces of the
body can be perfected – “so that we are not reminded of the
mutability, fragility of our bodies,” Clancy says. “The cosmetic
industry is based on a particular aesthetic ideal. It offers ways
to modify/cover up bodies that do not fit into this ideal.”
More and more in the Western world men are also being
targeted. But in reality this is hardly a new phenomenon.
The history of scarification and tattooing has long been
cross-gender and also clearly influences Clancy’s aesthetic.
But rather than pursuing specific traditions, the patterning
in Clancy’s photographs is based on the naturally occurring
markings on the body – the lines, wrinkles or scars – specific to
the body she is working on. “They tell a story of that particular
body, based on their skin,” she says. “I also intend to refer to a
sense of the psychological relationship to the markings on our
skin, such as scars that become a part of us.”
PHOTOFILE 35
36 PHOTOFILE
PHOTOFILE 37
THE
IS
INTERNAL
SUDDENLY
EXTERNALISED
AS
LEFT
Peta Clancy, Pierce, 2007
C-Type Print 80, x 78.5cm.
Courtesy the artist and
thirtyseven degrees
contemporary fine
art gallery.
RIGHT
Peta Clancy, Lips 1, 2007
C-Type Print, 80 x 51cm.
Courtesy the artist and
thirtyseven degrees
contemporary fine
art gallery.
Peta Clancy, Crease3, 2007
C-type print, 80x53cm
PREVIOUS SPREAD LEFT
Peta Clancy, Crease 2, 2007
C-type print, 80x53cm
DECORATION,
In her most recent work Clancy has taken this concept
several stages further. The highly decorative patterns on her
eyelash works are based on anatomical diagrams of capillaries
just beneath the skin – the internal is suddenly externalised as
decoration, simultaneously raising the spectre of the fragility
of human skin.
Despite the beauty of the patterning, Clancy’s markings
suggest an invasion of the surface of the body from within, as
though the markings are generated by the body itself. In much
the same way as a bird’s genetically coded plumage makes it
attractive to a mate, Clancy’s humans have developed rapidfire genetic abilities to morph the surface, utilising internal
body structures for aesthetic adornment.
For all of the strange attractiveness of the end results,
Clancy takes this notion of the internal further by quoting
from Alberto Veca’s Vanitas The Symbolism of Time: “The skin
represents the opaque and deceptive skin over the foul and
shapeless mass of solid and liquid material that it encloses.
The beauty of the body ends at the skin. If men could see what
lies under the skin... they would shudder at the sight of women.
All that grace consists of mucus and blood, humours and bile.
If you think of what is hidden by the nostrils in the throat and
stomach, you realize it is only filth.”
PREVIOUS SPREAD RIGHT
Peta Clancy, Eye 1, 2007
C-type print, 80x63cm
38 PHOTOFILE
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