2008

George Petelin’s series Looking for Paradise is a somewhat satirical series that considers serious contemporary issues surrounding ecological, social and cultural disaster. Working with images from the Gold Coast, a constructed ‘paradise’ of sorts with its own seedy underbelly, Petelin digitally floods the images and sets adrift lifeboats from the refugee ship Tampa. As is well-documented, the Howard government exploited the ‘events’ surrounding the Tampa as a political pawn and scare tactic in their 2001 re-election campaign.

Looking for Paradise is intentionally ‘clunky’ in its process of digital montage. Petelin does not attempt to make his combination of media seamless, for such idealised approaches often leave the resultant image cold and artificial. In doing so he highlights the fracture between social ideals and the reality of daily life. Additionally, the work isn’t about the Gold Coast or Australian politics per se; Petelin is investigating global concerns. In essence he is commenting on social responsibility. We must be responsible for our actions, as individuals, as nations, as caretakers of the ecology that we, as a species, need to survive. There is a saying that people receive the government they deserve – is humanity is heading towards a future it has brought upon itself? We have a choice, but we are running out of time to choose what are in essence our only options.

By contrast, while also contemplating an important global concern, Utako Shindo has created a body of work that reflects upon issues surrounding immigration and the migrant experience. Oscillating Landscape explores notions of the Universal in the Local. She is interested in sensations evoked by an indeterminate landscape’s light, shade and colour, when a photograph depicts one particular vista but simulate another locale. Utako is currently undertaking post-graduate studies in Melbourne and her photographs are of Australian landscapes, but they highlight similarities between aspects of our country and her homeland of Japan.

In her landscapes, Utako looks upward. A glimpse of blue sky could be anywhere, but in a photograph it remains rooted to its source of capture. As a migrant she is well aware of this phenomena: when sending a photo to friends and family back home, such a ‘sky piece’1 becomes a symbol of the closeness and distance between people, between cultures. It appears very familiar but simultaneously it is, by its very essence, foreign.

And while June Indrefjord is investigating notions of representation in a photographic realm, that of the transformation of 3D to 2D, one cannot help but find a connectivity between ideas of closeness and distance. The silhouette as a natural phenomenon is defined by backlighting. Working in pre-existing and purpose-built tunnels, Indrefjord highlights (and backlights) the very nature of photography and moreover an innate human drive towards inclusion and separation. Tunnels connect but also disconnect – is there anyone who has looked down an unfamiliar tunnel and not felt some trepidation as to what may lay forth?

Some of Indrefjord’s spaces will be recognisable to our viewers, while others remain unknown. The Unknown, and the Known. Which path will keep you out of harm’s way, which do you follow and when should one seek another path? Indrefjord’s images float in that intangible ‘in between’, the space between appearance and reality.

In such an environment it may seem incongruous to look at Nathan Corum’s work, which is unashamedly ensconced in the field of motion pictures as a source of photographic possibilities. Yet in his work Corum questions the idea of identity and a sense of place. Keeping in mind an appreciation of the grand history of Technicolor and other cinematic developments, Corum has created an analogue abstraction that could never exist digitally. The Corumscope is a new archaic process (please ignore the redundancy in terms) that flies agin Photoshop. In his ongoing series Corum literally breaks down images of friends and colleagues to circles of luminous colour. He redefines the idea of ‘circles on confusion’, a technical photographic concept relating to focus, defying a micro ideal and reviving it as a macro phenomenon. Corum can make the personal impersonal, yet he ensures that the abstract is familiar and comfortable.

Petelin melds images of reality with the foreboding; Utako investigates cultural hierarchy; Indrefjord ponders the space between; and Corum questions the very concept of the individual within the Masses.

Gordon Craig

1 With thanks to Arryn Snowball for coining this term.