SUBURBAN ZEITGEIST, a photographic exploration of Suburbanscapes, will kick off Canberra’s three-month Vivid Photography Festival with a special preview on Wednesday 9th July.

The exhibition showcases work from 17 artists who are currently undertaking postgraduate studies or have recently graduated from the ANU School of Art’s Photography and Media Arts Department. Reflecting a diverse perception of suburban surfaces and occupied spaces, the exhibition presents various media practices and techniques that question and explore the boundaries of the everyday. Here, familiar suburban landscapes are reconfigured to become a world of peculiar subjects that challenge assumptions of the Suburbs as places of banality, uniformity and monotony. Instead we are exposed to a contemporary archaeology of our dreams and desires for an ideal life against the backdrop of a globalised world.

The exhibition will be opened by Dr Martyn Jolly, Head of the ANU Department of Photography and Media Arts. Dr Jolly is a recognised artist and photography scholar who has played a significant role in fostering the development of practice-lead research at the ANU.

Maya Havilland (PhD candidate in Photomedia and CCR) writes from Derby in Western Australia: “we’ve completed the first week of a collaborative workshop working with a group of 7 women in Derby. Rachel (from the Neighborhood Story Project in New Orleans) and I are facilitating a writing and photography workshop to create a small book on the experiences of learning and education of women here in Derby. We kicked off on Monday, and have been working about 4 hours a day with women… the project will continue for another 2 weeks, so far its been wonderful, busy and rich, lots of great stories and pictures coming out… as well as reflections on the process of doing this kind of work.” Sounds great, looks great, (envy)!

PhD candidate Jan Hogan (Printmedia and Drawing) presents her supervisors with work in progress in her studio and in the ANU School of Art Gallery. Her work (both drawing, lithography and books made of plywood) is concerned with developing a cross-cultural understanding of the land, focussing on the Common at Gundaroo, 50km north of Canberra. All the different phases of her work are moved to and fro from the studio to the common, again and again, and their form evolves through what Jan calls a process of negotiation of ideas, references, memories and experiences. Watch this space! (Click through the thumbnails to see more details)

As topical as these themes might be, they do not always equal a Bill Henson. You’ll have to run to catch them in the work of Jay Kochel (PhD candidate, Sculpture) at Sequence at M16 Gallery in Fyshwick. And you won’t get their subtleties from these snaps: Tide Lines, 1-3, This is not a Pissing Contest, 1-5, and The Night Before the Morning After 1-3 are nevertheless evocative of adolescent experience, but without the patriachal gaze of the venerable BH. No doubt we’ll have opportunities for discussion back at the ranch.

And the Bombala Times now that’s outreach for you!

This is the Ontario College of Art and Design, in Toronto, designed by Stirling Prizewinner Will Alsop - you have to check the frenetic website!

Don’t miss Nicky Dickson’s (PhD, Painting) upcoming show at the ANU School of Art Foyer Gallery.

In her own words:

‘Other’ Visions

The term exotic carries with it connotations of foreignness, excitement and an attractive strangeness. The exotic is not an inherent quality found in particular people, objects or places rather it is a particular form of perception that originated in the European mind when confronted with the ‘other’ Pacific or Australasian person, plant, animal, or artefact. Identification of the strange or unusual exotic ‘other’ is made by comparison to things and people that are usual and familiar. It is the very strangeness and unfamiliarity of the ‘other’ that becomes attractive and desirable.
The cultural lure of the exotic was, and is, a strange, paradoxical blend of the empirical and the fantastic. Factual information was interpreted and inevitably perceived through European conventions and desires. This exhibition engages with how assumptions formed concerning the ‘other’ person or artefact from elsewhere were constructed and presented to 18th and 19th century European audiences as a fantastic jumble of ‘curiosities’. This predominately occurred in the context the natural history museum. In this period there was no distinction made between specimens of plants, animals, people or their material culture; all were considered revelatory of the characteristics of the exotic ‘other’ and the diversity found in nature.

Nicola Dickson 2008

is the title of Pam Lofts’ Alice Prize entry. To be announced tonight…