Back & Forth
'In Sequence'| PhotoAccess members' exhibition - Back & Forth
I have a new piece in the first Member's Show of 2016. Entitled Back & Forth, the work comprises a sequence of 7 images looped and presented in a digital frame. It looks mesmerisingly cool. The opening is next Thursday (28 January) at 6pm at the Huw Davies Gallery.
Some gallery blurb about the show
The first PhotoAccess members’ exhibition for 2016, 'In Sequence' presents works creatively addressing the notion of sequence and narrative in photography. For many artists, photography is not only about single images, but relationships between multiple images. A sequence of images can tell a particular story or narrative, create a sense of visual poetry, or suggest movement and time passing. 'In Sequence' aims to showcase a variety of approaches to the notion of the photographic sequence, using traditional, experimental and digital photographic techniques.
• Opening: 6pm 28 January 2016
• Where: PhotoAccess - Huw Davies Gallery, Manuka Arts Centre
• When: 28 January – 21 February 2016
Through a Glass Clearly
There’s a moment when you notice something. Something that catches and teases. It may be the curve of a tree or the lightness of a feather drifting on a warm spring breeze ... unseen but for its effect upon the small things. Mostly for me it’s about the light. The way light plays with the things around us and renders them beautiful or dramatic ... the darkness of shadows and that gradient between glow and gloom. Sometimes it’s about trying to capture and entire world inside something much smaller ... concentrating it ... refracting it back at myself through the transience of a water droplet or a glass sphere.
It is as much about the journey of a photograph. A sinuous chasing down of the beauty you saw that very first time, the tender play and rendering of a picture until a certain essence is revealed ... a little something of what was seen made manifest and shared.
That’s what these pictures are. They’re little fragments of time and space collected and coalesced and placed on walls ... distilled results of the myriad journeys undertaken to create them.
In these I hope to show you just a little something of the thing I saw.
The collection of images on show.
About the Title
Through a Glass, Clearly is a collection of four short stories written by Isaac Asimov and first published in 1967. One story in particular: It’s Such A Beautiful Day, is set in the year 2117 and presents District A-3, a newly built suburb of San Francisco, and the world's first community to be built entirely using Doors, a method of travel via teleportation.
When the Door that transfers him from home to school fails, Richard "Dickie" Hanshaw takes a dislike to the method and starts to wander outside in the unfamiliar open, exposed to the elements. When he catches a cold, Mrs. Hanshaw is horrified and takes him to see Dr. Sloane, a psychiatrist, afraid that her son's wanderings are signs of a mental abnormality...
Geoffrey Dunn is a multi-award winning and internationally published photographer. He is entirely self-taught. Through a Glass Clearly is his third and final solo exhibition for 2014. The title of the show is also a reference to the act of capturing light with a camera ... through a glass clearly...
The details...
- What: Through a Glass Clearly - New photographic works by Geoffrey Dunn
- Where: The Front Gallery - Wattle Street, Lyneham, Canberra
- Duration: 17-29 September 2014
- Opening: 6pm Friday 19th September 2014
Links
- MEDIA RELEASE Geoffrey Dunn - Through a Glass Clearly
- Show postcards: Front and Back
- The Front Cafe & Gallery
- My printer - Stephen Best of Macquarie Editions
Searching
I tried hard to take a picture this morning. The day was glorious ... one of those Canberra winter days where the air is still, there's not a cloud in the sky and the warmth of the sun balances the chill in the air. I love days like these. I wanted to take a photo (it does happen sometimes!) and so I packed my light camera bag with a couple of lenses and headed out on into the late morning on my bicycle. I'd heard there was a car concourse over on the lawns of Old Parliament House to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Leyland P-76 ... not that I'ver ever owned one or even aspired to ... my first car was an automatic Triumph 2000 MkII and being manufactured largely by Leyland replete with apalling quality control and ridiculously dodgy wiring I always felt a kind of sympathy for these ... they were known as lemons and I recall a house in my suburb when I was growing up that had six of these cars in various states of decay on the front lawn. My Triumph or 'Tilley' as I called her was my first venture into the world of seventies British automotive engineering ... I ended up trading her for beaten up but gorgeous brass body Canon New F-1 camera and a couple of lenses (did I ever mention I have a lens habit?) ... I miss that car, it's smell and the way it lurched underpowered into corners but I think I got the better deal ... after all I still have that camera and it still works as well as the day I received it.
There are some times I'm simply not interested in taking photos and wandering around the concourse this morning was one of those times. There were many gorgeous colours ... repetition of theme ... curly cables ... eccentric characters but it was all Meh! I had a bag of excellent photographic gear and I watched other people taking snapshots and with various cameras and mine stayed in my bag and I just lugged it around for the fun of it. It was funny I thought ... I'd come here with the express notion of taking some photos ... and now I'm here I find none of it inspiring ... at all ... so I simply sniffed the engines, remember my Tilley and get back on my bike and ride toward home. On the way I pass a bit of decay ... the old Police & Citizens Youth Club ... closed for years now ... and see a little something ... it's a busted fan set into a brick wall but it appeals to me ... the first thing today. Not enough to be arsed taking my camera out mind you but enough to snap it hastily with my phone to remind me to go back and take it properly... I continued on my searching way...
So I keep on riding toward home and I come through Haig Park in Turner ... a long avenue of trees ... I used to live in a house (now long redeveloped) directly opposite the western end of the park ... and I see the light. Here's where I'm supposed to be ... there's the photo I'm looking for ... I roll my eyes ... at least I got some exercise riding across the lake first up :-)
I had my oculus with me and it captured the scene perfectly ... it's spherical fashion refracting the vista into it's tidy and tiny world.
And ... just because I like you lots I took a picture of the setup ... I found a small fallen branch and stuck it into the soil to create something to rest the oculus upon ... that's bushcraft that is ... lol :-)
And how about you? Do you ever grab your gear and go for a walk and leave the camera in your bag ... or take absolutely nothing except exercise?
Temple of the Sun
Another oculus picture from my coastal artist retreat from earlier this month at Ness. Here the rising sun clears the top of an exposed rock.
Looking at a scene refracted through the glass sphere makes it appear both internalised and externalised at the same time ... like I'm both within and without simultaneously ... it does something for me ... something deep.
Do you have a special object or way of of looking that touches you deeply? You know, makes you think of things differently for a moment? That takes you beyond?
Do tell :-)
Finding the Spot
A couple of weeks ago I attended an artists retreat down on the far south coast of New South Wales. I had my oculus, my glass sphere with me and I was down at the beach before dawn each morning looking for that time when light and landscape come together to create something breathtaking.
Sometimes a picture seems to assemble itself before my eyes. I get this feeling as a scene unfolds, like a premonition, that right this moment or very soon after something beautiful is happening in front of me or 'just over there'. Perhaps it is simply my mind opening itself to the possibility of beauty ... that I am allowing myself to be open to what is unfolding in front of me. Other times I can be surrounded by a terrific scene and light but I'm oblivious to it as I search for something within it ... something beyond it. Those times I'm looking to scratch an itch I can't reach ... I know there's something there but I can't see it ... yet! This picture is a rare one of me doing just that.
This is a picture of me taken by my friend Helga as I walked across the wave platform in the light just after dawn holding my oculus out in front of looking for the spot ... in my left hand I'm cradling my camera and my back pocket holds my cable release and intervalometer. I have an obsessive gleam in my eye that speaks of concentration and an early start. I am surrounded by superb golden dawnlight that the ocean spray is carrying in foggy curtains around me ... beautiful!
About five minutes after this picture was taken I was taking the photograph below (which blogged about here) ... I had found the spot ... I had seen beyond and now I'm sharing it with you.
How about you? Do you search, often surrounded by beauty but oblivious to it? Maybe you find yourself standing inside a tree heavy with spring blossom and buzzing loudly with bees looking for that bloom that speaks for the tree ... that speaks for all of spring? The leaf that speaks for Autumn... do you find yourself finding the spot?
I'd like to know :-)
Turning the World Upside Down
I carry a beautiful thing around in my camera bag. An oculus. It's a clear glass sphere and it changes the way I look at the world. It doesn't look amazing on it's own ... in fact it can appear quite dull but sometimes I hold it up in front my face and it takes my breath away. Through the properties of refraction, it renders any scene into a tiny world ... a tiny, totally in-focus world. An upside-down, totally in focus world. In the image above taken just after dawn on the far south coast of New South Wales, I rested the sphere atop a rock looking out toward the waves. The fine bedding of the Ordovician mudstones of this part of the coast have been buckled and twisted and rent vertically in places. I brought the sphere (and it's refractive contents) into focus and rendered the background blurred. It looks great right way up but I like to rotate my oculus images through 180 degrees to aid the viewer's appreciation of the scene. The little sun flare off the edge of the sphere is one of my favourite parts of the image.
In the image below, I'm holding the sphere with my left hand and shooting with my right. It was taken in coastal forest. This image reminds me that the world is a fragile place and one that we literally hold in our hands as a place to nourish and feed ourselves.
I'm fascinated with different ways of looking at ordinary things. Refraction and refraction images are just two.
What about you? Do you carry anything special in your bag? Something that turns your world upside-down or causes you to look at the world in a different way?