ART TALK

Art Talk

Conversations with leading Australasian and international artists & curators.

  1. ABSTRACT EARTH: The Photography of Richard Woldendorp

    06/28/2008

    ABSTRACT EARTH: The Photography of Richard Woldendorp

    Talking with Richard Woldendorp, a highly respected photographer acknowledged as Australia’s eminent practitioner of aerial photography. For almost 50 years, Woldendorp has documented the country's unique landscape from the sky. His images of the environment, taken from the air, have established a fresh visual vocabulary for the Australian landscape. Now at age 81, Richard Woldendorp has a major exhibition of his work in Sydney, presented by the National Trust S.H. Ervin Gallery 20 June - 03 August 2008. Richard WoldendorpThe exhibition acknowledges Woldendorp’s important contribution to Australian landscape photography and has been selected by art critic John McDonald and photographer R. Ian Lloyd. Abstract Earth: A view from above - a new publication of Woldendorp’s work, will accompany this exhibition. Richard Woldendorp captures the vastness of the Australian outback, our distinctive coastlines and our man made landscapes in a way that combines both realism and precision with the power of large-scale abstract paintings. Named Australian Photographer of the Year for his landscape photography, Richard has exhibited in Australia and overseas and is represented in the public collections of the Australian National Gallery, Art Gallery of NSW and Art Gallery of WA. First hit the play button to hear the interview, then click this link to the SH Ervin Gallery to view work & info: http://www.nsw.nationaltrust.org.au/properties/gallery/exhibitions/richard/default.asp

    7 min
  2. Guy Benfield: MAXIMUM COMMUNE

    07/23/2007

    Guy Benfield: MAXIMUM COMMUNE

    Maximum Commune (Ugly Business... on the basis of disbelief.) Talking with Australian New York based artist Guy Benfield, about his performance installation work Maximum Commune, part of the Aftermath: Performance Installation series curated by Blair French at Sydney's ART SPACE gallery, right next to the harbour. With the USS Kitty Hawk moored across the street, Guy walked and talked us through his unique work and world. "Maximum Commune... utilises the cultural model of the 'pavilion' juxtaposed with tropes of modernist architecture, examples of hand-built alternative Zome housing originating from Southern California in the 1960s and collectives such as Drop City. Within these structures, Guy Benfield performs a series of actions, 'droppings' or situational episodes that re-animate tropes that were once declared obsolete obsolete, such as ritual, live action painting in the genre of george mathieu, the 'Art informal' movement in France, and the Japanese actionist painting movement - Gutai group. In these performance scenarios Benfield investigates the West Coast Funk Ceramic movement of the late sixties, pottery as an expressionist dialogue and the bourgeois bohemian lifestyle he experienced while growing up insuburban Sydney." The Aftermath: Performance Installation series provides a critical and public focus to the complex relationship of performance to installation art, sharing a genealogy, as they do, in early conceptual and post-object art. Aftermath centres on the installation 'aftermath' of performance, or conversely, performance as a strategy for creation of material environments - the bleeding back and forth of active models of performance and its post-life.Each week one of six artists participating from Australia and abroad will undertake a performance work in one of the Artspace galleries resulting in an installation 'aftermath' and collectively creating a dynamic, rolling set of relationships between changing spaces. Art Space link: http://www.artspace.org.au More images on the Art Talk Blog: http://www.arttalking.blogspot.com/

    20 min

Ratings & Reviews

4.3
out of 5
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Conversations with leading Australasian and international artists & curators.