Ballarat International Foto Biennale Fringe 2

Ballarat International Foto Biennale Fringe 2013  No:2

G’day Possums,

Shane reporting

last Sunday Darron Davies and I met up to wander the BIFB’s Fringe circuit  for the day. 

Darron’s stuff “Immingle” is at Venue 59, Blue Artz Gallery about half way along the Howitt St block from Burnbank St.

Darron Davies

 From here we drove to Venue 57 for Alison Spence and Denise Regan  “Square Route” at Eclectic Tastes in Burnbank St

 

“Square Route” at Eclectic Tastes

Alison Spence is also exhibiting at Venue 47 (see last post) 

Anthony Baxter

Anthony Baxter’s “Old Boys” is at Venue 56 The Lakeview Hotel, a short walk from Bob Munro’s “A Traveller’s Eye” at Racers Bar and Café at Venue 54.

Bob Munro

 A walk around the Lake took us to Sails on the Lake and Ross Thompson’s “The Pooling of our Coastline” at Venue 55.

Ross Thompson

 We then crossed the city to see Cheney/Hart/Dennett et al at Venue 67 The Ballarat Observatory.

Ballarat Observatory

 

Ballarat Observatory

Peter Ward’s “Tonal Reality” was seen next at Her Majesty’s Theatre (upstairs) at Venue 15 

Peter Ward’s “Tonal Reality”

 

Her Majesty's

Then over the road to The Known World Bookshop, Venue 11 and  Lucie Akers “Heidelberg – a Tribute to the Heidelberg School”.

The Known World Bookshop

 

“Heidelberg – a Tribute to the Heidelberg School”.

Venue 7, Phoenix Brewery was the site for Bec Walton’s “Jewel of Lights”.

 

Bec Walton’s

The Forge Pizzeria, Venue 39 is showing John Smallman and Aldona Kmiec. 

The Forge Pizzeria

There was some very good work in amongst these shows and even though some were too small for the ideas presented, the opposite was also true.

Footpath by Shane W

 Interesting landscape work where you can see that line between the literal and the sublime. 

Art Nouveau, Her Majesty's Theatre

Some required more rigour and less use of twee irritating photoshop “edges” and when your brochure is more interesting than the show …..hmmmmm.

Ways of seeing?

I commented in the last post of not liking HDR very much but Peter Ward’s are really worth a look as I think he uses it really subject-appropriately.  The stuff at Venue 57 was a fun presentation and Venue 56’s “Old Boys” was a heartfelt documentation that needed a quieter more reflective space.

BFAG

I particularly like “Immingle” and the poetic terrarium abstracts at venue 59 and must add Sandra Elms from the “Adelaide Photographic Artists” which I missed the last post.

Four of my works are being re-printed and re-mounted as they are delaminating and are full of bubbles as they separate from the background…. should be ready Monday or Tuesday…as “Effie” would say, “How embarrassment!”

More in a few days, another mid-week wander to catch those Biennale Fringe shows not open on Sunday. 

Wombat Droppings or Politics in Oz

Rooty Hill is a perfectly named place for a debate between the main contenders in this election campaign.

All the commentators have been saying it was an even debate…Hmmmm, I think not.

“Rabbott” under-performed and under-delivered except for his three line slogans and looking curiously gray-green in pallor made me wonder if he really is Voldemort but it was his haltingly poor answers to specific questions, the pathological reliance on pushing the “message” and allied with a frightening inability to answer in detail showed the inherent and devious weakness in his arguments. For all his waffle about "Pillars and Plans" there was no vision and no engagement with the audience and even though Kev 07 +6, I think had more probing questions, his ability to answer with detail, seemed to receive more positive audience response.

An over-strident, bullying Michael Kroger in later interview was a fine example of  “they-protest-too-much” to be believed … they don’t like close and detailed scrutiny and lash out when cornered.

This makes me wonder if the wheels are beginning to fall off the Liarbril rabble’s cart. They are being almost Stalinist-Revisionist in their versions of recent history and insanely funny in blaming Labor for negative and bullying tactics. Ex-Independent Tony Windsor noted in interview their strategic policy to destroy Gillard and said that he couldn’t support “Rabbott’ as leader in the minority government because of ”Rabbott’s” lack of a stable personality.

The conservatives have also made much of just how angry Windsor’s constituents were with his support for the Labor minority government. Windsor said with a smile, “I had 14 actual complaints in three years”.

Sophie “Pit-Bull” Mirabella is preferencing first, a candidate who believes that the last tragic bushfires were god’s punishment for women having abortions!  Mirabella has managed to take a safe Liarbril seat to one that an independent might wrest from her clammy grip.

10 days to go before the Age of The Aspirational Bogan putridly flowers.

Cheers,

Shane

The Australian Index

...on a new day

A new day, a new book and video, some changes and different attitudes…….

Shane on Bed

 

....... mentioned in the last entry that the book was supposed to be part of a competition for the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (17-8-13 to 15-9-13), which at the last minute I decided not to enter. The nature of competitions are such that they are always problematic in their impartiality and I really had to consider with this competition whether my book would really be suitable as an entrant. Arranging together the best of your work in theme, subject, style or concept is one thing but then to compare it with 80 pages of images that have been shot mostly in a single day, to me, presents a problem. 

Like comparing apples and oranges.

One thing I did learn was that I'll use Blurb's In-Design download again for future publications as the layout freedoms and flexibility were excellent. And once you have successfully navigated the upload procedures the book seemed to load more quickly than the standard Blurb templates.

Following are some of its images and a link to a preview if you're interested.

http://www.blurb.com/b/4450730-invitation-to-the-dance

Gottschalk

Chopiniana

Don Q

Concerto

rehearsal

The Swan

 This new video was a bit of fun and I found some surprising elements like the movement of light and the sense that some of the images matched so well as to look as though they were shot from a fixed camera. Generally they were shot each morning after breakfast with me standing on a chair and holding the camera over the beds on a monopod with a cable release attached so the idea that they match is a serendipitous fluke. 
http://youtu.be/xP0S7OwmDME
 I may do videos of the doors I shot in France and the crypt shots from Pere Lachaise 

Comments are welcome. 

Wombat Droppings or Politics in Oz

 Rudd is dudding da Liarbrils.... latest polls suggest things have turned dramatically and  are now neck and neck.

"Rabbott" is being unusually diplomatic (most of the time... see new image) but is being

hampered by answering every question with,"We'll-stop-the-boats,We'll-stop-the-boats, We'll-stop-the-boats"..... even when he's asked the time!

He's also been comparing (mine's -bigger-than-yours) expenses with "Slippery Pete", which is not a good look but "Rabbott" didn't get hounded the same way.

Rudd announced that the Carbon Price will be changed to a Emission Trading Scheme earlier than first planned which had the Liarbril's (who are fundamentally, climate change deniers) Greg (What's-an-Environment?)Hunt tying himself in knots trying to argue against something he doesn't believe exists..... and Joe(Oh-What-a-Feeling)Hockey keeps misquoting treasury figures supplied by "Drone"Morrison by about 50%.
Perhaps Joe could become a Chiropractor after politics?

Another nail in the coffin of mythical Liarbril economic rectitiude is being investigated in the $5,000,000,000,000 losses in forestry schemes set up by "Little-Johnny" Howard (and unfortunately not stopped by subsequent Labor Governments)

Here in the Tardis State(Pretend Premier, Dennis (Inutilis-Rusticus) Napthine was seen in a paddock with a large mushroom ...it is fairly certain he didn't eat it, since lately, no increase in imagination has been shown. 

370 Residents of Richmond have been in rapturous chorus for The Pretend Premier as they're to receive compensation for having their houses converted into a freeway and acres of Royal Park are to be concreted over at a cost of about $7,000,000,000,000.

Tardis State(Where-All-Goes-Backward) Health Minister (that's a joke, folks) David (Enema) Davies denies that getting an ambulance is a health hazard, is certain that all ambos  earn around $100,000 a minute but denies that the mess the ambulance and hospital system is in goes back to "reforms" made under the lash of Jeff (Bully-Boy) Kennett (the Dorian Gray of Tardis State politics) in cahoots with insurance companies.

A fossil has been found in Queensland. No, it's not Premier "Il Duce" Newman! 

It's a real fossil that has value.

Cheers possums,

Shane

...seeing the cat belled.

 G'day Petals

Shane in the mix

We've been working on a new book of the last performance photographed... it was also meant to be entered into a competition as part of the Ballarat International Foto Biennale (17-8-13 to 15-9-13) but I have decided that as the end result was probably not really worth the effort....I'll give the comp a miss.... but here are a couple of shots from what should be at the printers tomorrow

Visually, this book is I think, one of the nicest I've put my name to and it will have the intermission video included as well.

I have presented some of the shots, like this one of Bec R, according to the idea that all theatre is a "conceit" that our willingness to participate in the conceit is where we derive our pleasure in  performance.

Bec Reeves, Triptych

Bec Reeves.

 It is interesting to note too, how the performance predicates the presentation of a book and its layout according to shot selection and story.

The rhythm of the performance is similar to the dynamic of the class and what you shoot to a great degree is informed by this.

It can often become more than the mere recording of an event. 

Olivia and Gus

 And there are some other things that have happened as a result of taking some people for classes in "Looking at Photographs"....

Cup and Egg

Light

Cafe Table

Wombat Droppings

Well, that’s been a week!

Starting off with Judith Sloane’s blog troll-ism ( re: degrees for child-care workers being only for “….dim-wits from second or third rate university’s”) being queried in public and her inability to effectively defend herself and further credibility as the “Q and A” audience groaned with disbelief at her assertion that ex PM “Little Johnny” Howard had suffered vilification equivalent to Julia Gillard!

View the compilation below to see how low the “right” have sunk in this country and do a “compare and contrast” Sloane’s oft repeated assertion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsECK-gRCGc

I searched for the site to read the article ..something called Catalepsy …or something… and was astounded by the comments supporting the honoury profs’ troll-isms. It was full of the most bilious malevolent, vitriolic and noxious rantings. And woe-be-tide any who dared disagree or criticize in this troll kingdom; they were immediately attacked and vilified. I could only visualise it all as a Hieronymus Bosch painting with the “…weeping and gnashing of teeth” of the damned and forgotten.  A very nasty place.

Then “Big Red”Gillard gets rolled and Kev’s back as PM!

Oi!

An immediate 16% jump in the for Labor only goes to show that it’s all about personality, not policy and how politically sophisticated the electorate isn’t.

But Kev did a couple of things: first he makes a joke of the Tow-back-the-Boats idea forcing the Liarbrils to attempt explaining their policy (they can’t) and secondly: he invites “Rabbott” Abbott to a series of policy debates that has the Liarbrils all running for cover in fright at having to publicly explain anything in more than a three word slogan.

Labor has finally “Belled the Cat” and the Liarbrils smell of funk!

Julie “Death-Stare” Bishop spits that Kev’s joke on the Boats is the most dreadful thing since the crucifixion which oddly enough is exactly the line played in Rupert “The Ugly American” ( He-Who–Lies-to-British-Parliamentary-Enquiries) Murdoch’s rag, The Australian… but this ‘aint news, they’ve been writing the script for three years!

Joe “Oh- What-a- Feeling” Hockey (opposition treasurer) ties himself up in knots again and looks suitably and unimaginatively Liarbril-ly stupid in interview, opining that Oz doesn’t have the population to support a “Very Fast Rail” system, which, being said immediately after a French fellow involved in this infrastructure in Europe thinks that Oz is ideally placed right now to benefit from this development, indicates where this country will head under the Liarbrils.

Sophie “Pit-Bull” Mirabella is verbally and conceptually mauled on “Q and A” by Tanya Plibersek, particularly after her “…total solution” to the refugee problem; Tony Windsor awarding “Pit-Bull” The-Most-Unpopular-Woman-in-Parliament prize was very funny; and given a straw poll Mrs Wombat and I held yesterday at lunch with 8 men and women, we did, too.  I wonder if she goes to a lonely home to cry herself to sleep.

And then there was this….  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/01/michaelia-cash-labor-sisterhood-penny-wong

Oi, These coarse women….!!

Leigh Sales (7:30 Report, ABC), was positively ugly again, salivating over tragedy, confusing being a player with being a reporter. In feeding the parents of a young man who died installing Pink Insulation batts in a Government sponsored work scheme, prompting them every opportunity to swipe at Rudd, “Do you want to say more?” ….”What would you like to say to PM Rudd?” etc , Sales’ crass tabloid techniques again dilute the quality of ABC journalism.

A coroner’s report three years after the event? Timed to co-incide with an election?

Where the management and work practices of the business owners and the OH and S in Queensland barely rate a mention in reporting? Give us a break!

Sales’ puerile question: “Do you think you get better at acting with experience?” to Russell Crowe, “belled” that cat, too.

New minister in Rudd government, Ed Husic takes Oath of Office on the Koran: which releases a tsunami of mis-spelled Bogan vitriol on FB which not only shows a frightening lack of knowledge of the country’s constitution; the embarrassing level of cultural sensitivity and awareness current in Australia but also how the conservative’s attitude have legitimised these morons’ comments. 

Below is a pic of local federal member Catherine King (Minister, Regional Development) officially opening the local landmark, The Half Church with the owners Kathy and Marlene.

Catherine King opening local landmark

Cheers Possums…. and to finish with a feline metaphor… I hope the poll results are not a “Dead-Cat’s-Bounce”.

Shane.

The Australian Index