John McRae Photography & Studio
Sydney Professional, Commercial & Corporate Photography
The talented glass artist, Dagmar Ackerman is staging an exhibition at her Balmain studio complex. I often photograph Dagmar’s works for catalogue entries and promotion, so I am familiar with her seductive and colourful art works.
So head down to the artist studio complex, One plus 2 Artist Studios, and browse through Dagmar’s glass exhibition. The exhibtion extends across the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) of the 22nd – 24th November, 2024.
Independently I was approached by three different contemporary sculptors to document their recent work. Since this happened almost simultaneously, I thought this synergy shown by Patrizia Biondi, Nuha Saad and Charlotte Van Ewyk merited a special blog post.
Shooting sculpture is very different to shooting two-dimensional artworks. In regards to photographing paintings, once the lighting is set up, it remains the same for consecutive works. However, for sculpture, each piece requires slightly different and adjusted lighting and shadowing. The other important feature when photographing sculptures is that you often need to document the sense of shifting perspective. Each angle and point of view is different. Therefore I take numerous images of the same piece, to make sure I have covered most of the various viewpoints. I then edit down the shots to create the narrative I wish to capture.
I have represented a few shots of each of the three sculptors’ work here: featuring Nuha Saad, Patrizia Biondi and Charlotte Van Ewyk.
I went to the former White Bay Power Station at the weekend to take a series of installation images of my work, on display as part of the “Power Up Festival” in Rozelle. (See previous blog post for more info). There has been a really good response to my photographs in the exhibition, which were visible through specially constructed “peep-holes” to create a surreal, hidden, slightly subversive effect. My photographs themselves capture scenes shot in the former psychiatric ward and hospital in Rozelle.
My good friend Maree Azzopardi has a wonderful solo exhibition showing at the Gosford Regional Art Gallery. Maree and I have known each other for many years, both professionally and privately. We have shown our work together many times in group exhibitions across the globe including in New York, Malta and Rome, as well as in galleries here in Australia.
Maree has always impressed me as a really “gutsy” painter and I have long admired her work. If you happen to travel to the Central Coast over the next six weeks (the Fireworks exhibition 29 Oct – 13 Dec, 2022) make sure you visit the Gosford Regional Art Gallery to visit her show.
The following are my photographs of some of Maree’s works from the exhibition, with a text written by the Rome-based curator (and mutual friend), Jonathan Turner.
FIREWORKS
“If fire (…) was taken to be a constituent element of the Universe, is it not because it is an element of human thought, the prime element of reverie?”
Gaston Bachelard, The Psychoanalysis of Fire, 1938.
According to the mid-20th Century French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, the phenomenon of fire is situated at the crossroads of science and poetry. His studies included an approach to the components represented by fire, the libido and flaming passion, while his philosophical response to man’s basic instinct to control fire was his brilliant analysis of the myth of Prometheus, who was punished by the capricious Greek gods for his theft of fire and its subsequent gift to humanity in the form of knowledge and civilisation.
Maree Azzopardi takes Bachelard’s Psychoanalysis of Fire, and reverts back to the aspects of the impulsive, transgressive nature of fire, its ability to cause unintended consequences, the destructive powers of wild-fires and the subsequent joys of rejuvenation. At the Gosford Regional Gallery, her new Fireworks exhibition of paintings, drawings, concertina books, ceramic sculptures and mixed media photographic works assess the complexities of damage and grief associated with fire, but also the healing powers of nature and positive energy. In her work, Azzopardi reaffirms a desire for transformation. She studies the coexistence of life and death, reminiscent of the Greek myth of the phoenix, the immortal bird which regenerates cyclically, or is reborn in a different way. Associated with the sun, the phoenix receives new life by being resurrected from the ashes of its predecessor.
Fire has no form, weight or density, and Azzopardi’s watercolours and canvases reflect this. Like Mother Nature herself, bush-fires are untameable. Soothe Your Sorrows was initially created in response to the Black Summer Fires. The text comes from a late 19th Century diary kept by Tottie Thorburn, an unmarried woman who lived with her sisters in Meroogal House on the south coast of NSW. Tottie was devoted to the Scriptures, and Azzopardi’s work is inspired by her independent, isolated life. In a painting representing fire and the pandemic, Azzopardi uses 12 panels as a sacred number symbolizing the Apocalypse. But all is not lost. Azzopardi depicts both the scorched earth and the regeneration of native wattle.
“So after the fires, I created images using what I found, such as burnt branches used as charcoal and also the burnt bones of animals that I used as drawing tools,” explains the artist. “It became a sort of ritual of helping the scorched earth to heal, to release the spirits of the deceased animals, as well as addressing my own grief at what I had witnessed.”
In her recent work, Azzopardi incorporates a variety of materials including gouache, Sumi and Indian ink, oil stick, sand, flecks of gold-leaf, burnt feathers and rattan matting she has salvaged from discarded cane chairs washed-up on the beach at the high tide mark. Her Wings of Desire series are photographs of dead seabirds printed on linen, with shimmering stitches embroidered in gold thread. One work featuring matted feathers and the gilded skull of a bird is dedicated to the Greek myth of Icarus, the man whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun, and who fell to the sea and drowned. Meanwhile the shape of the bird skull itself is reminiscent of the beaked masks worn by medieval doctors in Italy to symbolically protect them against the plague, and now worn as traditional costumes during Carnival in Venice. Thus Azzopardi’s Fireworks reference the apocalyptic harbingers of pestilence, famine and war as the most pressing global concerns today, as well as the destruction wrought by floods and the Australian bushfires. Her theme is death heading towards rebirth, strife redeemed through spirituality.
In a nod to the hyper-vigilance of Google Earth (sometimes Azzopardi’s landscapes are even viewed from above), her paintings offer a deconstruction of the contemporary gaze. Her landscapes explore the notions of what is instantly recognizable and what is magnified to the point of abstraction, what is naturalistic and what has been crushed, scratched and blurred. Formal questions centre on empty and filled space, on shadow and light. This is all part of Azzopardi’s questioning on the “exhaustion of images” and the deeper concepts of memory and oblivion.
Jonathan Turner, October 2022.
I recently had the pleasure of spending an afternoon at the studio of the Australian artist, Charles Cooper. Charles is a long standing professional artist of high repute.
Charles has started an exciting project of producing a monograph of his work and required some additional photography for pieces he wanted to include.
I must admit I am really into the “surface” of painting and the surfaces of Charles’ paintings are lush and seductive which does it for me.
Charles has a long standing relationship with Annandale Galleries and his work can be seen if you click on the link.
Artist Rhonda Pryor exhibited in October, together with Kathie Najar at the Barometer Gallery in Paddington as part of Sydney Craft Week.
As a friend of mine, it was a joy to see Rhonda’s exhibition of new mixed media works combining fabric, canvas and paint.
For further information: www.rhondapryor.com
The end of the year is fast approaching and I’m confronting last minute jobs to be done, absolutely before the end of the year. Rationally, I know it’s just another day….but there’s this burning urge to finish certain tasks, leaving them in the year 2014, so that I may have a clean slate to start the New Year, a fresh.
One of those matters is the annual portrait of Matthew Mitcham. I have been documenting Matthew for quite a few years now, almost 9. Wow, how time flies! At some point in the year I ask Matt to sit for a formal portrait for the purpose of adding a new image to the line up.
This portrait takes the form of a cropped head shot. It is shot in a similar fashion each year, without being clinically precise in it’s recreation as I want to leave a small margin for variation and creative interpretation. So a few days before the New Year I am releasing the 2014 version of this series (pictured below). For the whole series see the main web site under the tab, “Exhibition”.
MMXIV, 2014, Pigment inkjet on cotton rag, 112cm x 78cm, Edition of 9 (2AP)