WASTELAND

A photomedia exhibition at Belconnen Gallery

Belconnen Community Centre 15^th – 24^th Nov, 2006

Official opening by Jo Bowen, Executive Director of BCS, at 3pm Wed 15^th Nov.

See images from the exhibition at Belconnen, and some from Tuggeranong Arts Centre

See images from the launch

Wasteland, a somewhat bleak title for an exhibition has yielded a collection of photographs that sing; songs of the forgotten and the remembered, of our own patch of land and of far corners of the world; songs of indigenous truths and non-indigenous impact; of the personal and the universal, the internal and external. Here are photographs in black and white or highly coloured, digitally manipulated or in original format, ink jet printed, silver gelatin on satin matt, or photo media on canvas.  Here is the photographer as observer and participant, each image a reflection of the artist’s idiosyncratic take on journeys, physical, historical, cultural and moral, producing images pregnant with blood and sweat, hard luck stories, dreams gone wrong, land gone crying, nature reclaiming; evocations of place and time.

Luisa Abello, singing green, redolent with mystery and the breath of Chilean nights; Jenni Kemarre Martiniello, singing landscape coloured, sharp reminders of attitudinal differences; Nasser Palangi singing for ‘everywoman/man’ recording the zeitgeist of our times, wastelands of the uprooted soul.  Geri Johnstone singing golden songs of a past, present, future contiguity of belonging in the landscape; Ian Haynes, more lucky than most to walk this land, singing of small things, an archaeologist of recent non-indigenous impact, within the frame a hundred stories; Sheila Keunen singing for hope and the possibility of a better life beyond the frame; Barbie Robinson singing of regret for lost human contact subsumed by the empty built environment; Jennifer Phillips singing songs of praise and redemption; Kathleen Fisher singing, lest we forget, for lost glories and love past; Susan Henderson singing for all of us who travel the road between Canberra and Western Sydney.  This is the highway that defines the limits of the MV network, whose cultural centres link us all and for which this is the first exhibition in a series.

Thankyou all for your passion and your rich interpretations of the curatorial brief.  In the end there are a couple of variations in the presentation of the works and in their geographic containment.  However community arts and culture, as practiced in Belconnen is about an organic and flexible approach to artists, and art is, as curators occasionally need reminding, about the voice and not the frame.

Anni Doyle Wawrzynczak – November 2006

About the Wasteland Project

Wasteland aims to provide a catalyst for artists and communities as individuals and groups to express their relationship to the environment including and between Western Sydney and the ACT. This stretch of landscape is viewed as a space to be traversed between two destinations – a wasteland to pass through.  Lines of beauty and despair are sped past, the natural and built positive space blurring into negative space.

Wasteland is a project of the MV Network, a federation of regional arts facilities and presenters bonded by the M5 motorway, stretching from the Casula Powerhouse in Western Sydney through Campbelltown and the Southern Tablelands to Canberra and Queanbeyan. The Wasteland exhibition at Belconnen is the first stage in a multi phase project that will see each of the members interpret the Wasteland theme, culminating in a major exhibition at the Casula Powerhouse in 2007.

You can read the longer version of the Wasteland brief here

The Belconnen Gallery is run by the Community Arts & Culture Program, a project of Belconnen Community Service. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the ACT Government.

Tel: 02 6264 0235    Email: jan@belcomserv.com.au      Web: www.belcomserv.com.au/art

=MV NETWORK

Kathleen Fisher

Kathleen Fisher has long given up the idea that photography has any intrinsic link with showing the “real” world. She likes the idea of “making pictures”, rather than “taking” them, and loves to play with an ever expanding collection of film cameras of varying formats and quality. Kathleen is a writer and photographer, with a Bachelor of Arts (English) (Honours) from Curtin University of Technology and a Graduate Certificate of Communications (Photomedia) from Edith Cowan University.

kfisher@smartchat.net.au

From nineteenth-century pastoral prosperity to modern brick suburbs still surrounded by paddocks dotted with cows — my interpretation of Wasteland explores Canberra’s Gungahlin district, past and present, through the story of an early settler’s grief.

Long before Australia had a national capital, when the land that became Canberra was a part of New South Wales known as the Limestone Plains, George Thomas Palmer employed William Davis Junior to manage his property, Ginninderra Estate. Fairytale romance followed — Davis married Palmer’s daughter, Susan Adriana, and became “squire” of the property on his father-in-law and former employer’s death.

Davis transformed Ginninderra Estate into an agricultural showpiece and community hub — he hosted balls with fireworks, and his paddocks were filled with plump sheep, fine horses and tall crops. About the time Ginninderra became a small town, Davis bought more land and built a house named Goongarline, from which “Gungahlin” derives.

The dream of gentrified rural success was shattered, however, on 26 February 1877 when Davis’s nephew, Henry William Earnest Palmer, tumbled from a horse named Gungahline, another Goongarline derivative. Heart-broken by the death of a man he considered a son, Davis instantly sold his horses and land, and turned his back on the district.

This is the story of fertile farmland becoming an emotional wasteland. Curiously, considerable portions of Davis’ land remains barely used today, waiting, it appears, for urban development.

The CSIRO now occupies Goongarline, better known as Gungahlin Homestead, which I have used as a backdrop for exploring Davis’ grief and Henry Palmer’s death. I have used an Anny camera (a Diana clone), which gives a distorted, dreamy quality through light leaks and a plastic lens, and created a sense of memory and fragility with ghostly images in unexpected places — a horse watches from the homestead’s grand entry, while a man grieves by a water pump, now walled up and dry.

Ian Haynes

Ian grew up on the Monaro. He is a local historian, bushwalker, photographer and naturalist and has walked from Canberra through to Wilson’s Promontory, through the Snowy Mountains and through much of Australia.  He has contributed photographs to the Snowy River Magazine, devoted to the high country of Victoria and New South Wales. Ian’s images capture snow gums and scenes from the snow country. He has exhibited with Canberra’s Encuentro group and held several solo exhibitions.

iankarin@netspeed.com.au

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Elliott - "Little Gidding" (the last of his Four Quartets)

Returning home from a long walk in March 2003 my route led me through the burnt Snowy Mountains. I have stopped there on many occasions to explore and absorb the history and atmosphere of the mountains. Along the road many tens of kilometres had been burnt. In many places I failed to recognise the bush for it had been totally altered. Most of the old, long dead trees were gone, burnt to ash, others charred and even rocks shattered and badly exfoliated

Although there was much destruction there was also much beauty in this charred countryside.  Now the bush was open, temporarily cleared of blackberries, which prior to the fire had been an impenetrable mass, hiding all. I wandered unobstructed through this charred bush, observing the phoenix-like return of plants and at the same time the evidence remaining from past activity.

At one point I found myself standing on a substantial earthen embankment.  I recall thinking, “now just what in the hell is this?” Slowly the penny dropped; this was the mortal remains of a construction township; the embankment the leading edge of the soil dumped and pushed over the site’s remains.

No longer hindered by the tangled mass of blackberries I wandered around the site passing back into another time frame covering the period of the mid 1920’s through to the early 1960’s .as I examined each piece of detritus.  A now rusty 1920’s vintage motorcar’s remains, electrical and mechanical components, tools, bottles and many drums, cans and tins. It was fascinating studying this history lying scattered around the site; a time capsule in a magnificent setting with mountain views, kangaroos and birds. What a journey of discovery this particular wasteland was.

Barbie Robinson

Barbie is a Canberra photomedia artist who has hung work in numerous group and solo exhibitions both in the ACT and interstate. She has published four books, two of which include her photographs. In 2004 she was a student finalist in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Shoot the Chef competition at the Art Gallery of NSW.  In 2005 she was artist in residence at Photoaccess, Manuka, receiving a grant to make a digital story and portrait exhibition about Canberrans over the age of 70. She has a Certificate in Creative Photography from ANU School of Art/Photoaccess.

brobinson@homemail.com.au

These images are from a larger body of work. When I began the work I was interested in what we mentally construct when we see fleetingly. I wanted to force my attention on blurred and incomplete images collected through the window of a bus on journeys that were even themselves somewhat random.

There is something filmic about this activity, the window framing a limited reality, which is seen in motion. Literary and filmic traditions seep into the process – G.K Chesterton detective stories of crimes seen from or committed on trains, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’, Heinrich Bull’s story, ‘Uber die Brucke, of the woman observed daily by the commuter as she systematically works her way around the cleaning of her apartment windows.

But then the work took on another life of its own, as I also found the destinations which I had been hoping to disregard, or at the very least second rung, compelling in their bleakness and hostility. These are vast, unfriendly public spaces, which we have created. People huddled together on the most crowded of buses spill out into a vast concrete emptiness. The irony of the name interchange makes me cringe – indeed this is the place where bus routes interchange, but there is no human interchange at all.

Oh for the Railway Refreshment Rooms of my youth where for a few shillings you could buy a gravy-coated meal and a cup of horribly stewed tea and sit passing the time of day in an unhealthily warm and oxygen-less cigarette-smoky room with other travellers!

Sheila Keunen

Sheila originally hails from West London in the UK.  She has employed the paintbrush and sold over 200 oil paintings.  She has managed the pen, and from the original handwritten notes of her husband’s childhood, and his experiences as a youth during the German occupation, has written a biographical novel.  She has written many poems about nature.  Always up for a challenge, in her fifties Sheila pursued the Sport of Powerlifting and has won twenty trophies.

Usually I take a photograph on my old camera of something I want to paint.  So the photograph is really a tool for me; a small tool that becomes covered in bits of paint or dust or other bits and pieces of my painting process.  Shot on film, these small photographs have been scanned and enlarged but not enhanced.

Neglect

This neglected shack in country ACT was once home to a family who left for who knows where -the abandoned refrigerator too large to fit on the Ute.

However a ray of hope shines on the scene - perhaps others will eventually arrive, clean up and live there.

Moved on

A feeling of pervasive emptiness inhabits this site -trees encroach, embracing the unused hut. Former dwellers have moved on to better pastures - absence marking a desolate land.

Susan Henderson

Susan has traveled extensively with her camera throughout New Guinea, Japan, France, Spain, Scotland, Ireland and Hawaii.  Her photographs have been included in a number of publications and group shows.  Susan was artist in residence at Photoaccess, Manuka in 2003.  She has a degree in photography from the Australian National University School of Art, has studied ceramics, landscape and portrait photography at the Penzance School of Art in Cornwall, UK and has a Diploma in Visual Art, Photomedia.

SMHenderson@mail.bigpond.com

Wastelands are unvalued spaces, sometimes desecrated, sometimes just deserted.  The trip from Canberra to Sydney, or Sydney to Canberra, is generally dominated by the expectation of what is to happen in Sydney, or the urge to get home.  Very occasionally there is a dalliance along the way at Berrima, or Mittagong, but generally it’s just a rush to the destination and all that is between is a waste.  But I look forward to seeing Lake George and the changing colours of the landscape.

Juggernauts at Dawn, taken at Collector, looks at the highway and its users, in this case interstate transports rushing towards each other, past grazing cattle with an ominous bill board advertising their potential fate.

You can only see Trails on Lake George if you stop in the Wasteland.  Here they are simply etched in morning frost in mid-winter.  A sharp and brisk encounter with nature stirs the traveller from their torpor of travelling through the Wasteland.  A beautiful thought to wander around in the mind whilst the journey through the Wasteland is completed.

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello

Jenni is an award winning poet, writer, visual artist, photographer and academic of Arrernte, Chinese and Anglo-Celtic descent. She is a member of the ACT Indigenous Textile Artists Group, and served on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the Australia Council for the Arts from 2001 to 2006. Her work is represented in multiple private collections nationally and internationally. She is the Director of Kemarre Arts.

kemarre@optusnet.com.au

Wasteland – Wilderness – to Indigenous Australia there is none. There is no part of this continent that has not, and continues to, support the physical, psychological and spiritual life of its people. Such concepts, and those such as the ‘dead centre’, the ‘outback’ are purely Eurocentric concepts, meaningful only to lately-come minds and lives that find themselves ill at ease, even alienated from the land; who find the environment hostile. Aboriginal people find no sense in this adversarial notion, why would you fight against your mother who nourishes you? For my mob, the Arrernte people of Central Australia, non-Indigenous Australia is full of such silly ideas.

Wasteland can only have meaning in terms of wasted land; land laid waste by widespread clearing, fencing, damming, farming, the decimation of country by sheep and cattle, and the consequent erosion. This is hurt country, wounded country crying out to be healed. Hurt This Saltwater Country portrays the pain of such wounded country. The rock itself seems to bleed, screaming. This saltwater country is Larrakia land, where the city of Darwin now stands. This photograph was taken at Nightcliff, the heart of Darwin’s evening promenade nightlife.

Sacred Country/Gulf Country is an aerial photograph of the Nicholson River Estuary, Eastern Arnhemland, where it feeds though rich mudflats into the Gulf of Carpentaria. Just to the north is Blue Mud Bay, whose Yolgnu people still live traditional lifestyles close to the sacred spirit of the land, and which is the subject of Australia’s first battle for the recognition of Native Title over Saltwater Rights. The subtle and beautiful markings of the country are the ‘texts’ of this country that hold the stories. The land itself is a living library of sacred texts. No wasteland, this-fella country.

Jenni Kemarre Martiniello

November 2006.

Geri Johnstone

Born in Sussex, Geri migrated to the Northern Territory in 1980.  She views photography as a natural extension to her early work as a portrait artist. After many years in politics and office management Geri, realising her heart’s desire, is currently completing a degree at the New York Institute of Photography. A finalist in a recent major photo competition in Canberra she displays her photography on the Internet to increasing acclaim. Mother to Lauren and Faith, Geri lives in Queanbeyan with her writer partner Brian.

brian-johnstone@bigpond.com

In writing about the landscape between Canberra and Sydney, I cannot help but think of the Poet John Anderson who believed many Australians still experience the feeling of being in a backwater.  He believed that Europeans had been in such a hurry to master this strange continent that many things were changed before they were recognized.  Few European Australians have achieved an organic relationship with the land and the uneasy feeling lingers of a people perched on the rim of a vast unknown… His poetry argues persistently, quietly, for people to make connection with the natural world – value the roadside things they drive past, to value and relate to their landscapes as they value and relate to one another. 

Many of us view the landscape as abused hillsides and weed-choked watercourses.  As a ‘European’ migrant I am glad I find the same wonder in the landscape as John did.  The wonderful gum forests whose shapes ‘dance’ together to form an artistic union.  Their gracefully smooth and white trunks bending and spiralling upwards and outwards, looking as ‘one’ within the harsh environment in which they flourish – to me they appear ethereal in an often surreal and mysterious landscape – the biggest and bluest of skies contrasting with the enormous expanses of pale gold of the now barren hillsides with an occasional smattering of skeletal dead trees, which form an almost perfect artistic if not melancholic vista. 

Is it the fact that much of the land has been abused, as in the case of the Penrose State Forest, that a somewhat sad feeling sometimes lingers? Or is it as John suggests that we were not made for the world that we made; we are organic and belong more truly to the natural world and should place ourselves in it.

Jennifer Kathleen Phillips

Born in New Zealand, Jennifer first visited Australia in 1969.  Her fascination with photography began early with her father’s Box Brownie.  In 2000 she moved to Australia and made her first piece of digital Art in 2004.  Her recent work has won a number of awards including Peoples Choice Award in the Art Views in the Hills group exhibition. Jennifer has degrees in Education, Multimedia Integration and Screen. She has published 4 books of poetry and remains deeply affected by the Australian landscape.

jennfer.k.phillips@gmail.com

Milk Pails

While staying at Heartzer Park retreat and thinking about “wasteland”, I came across a rusty old milk pail next to the stump of a once large old tree. The pail was empty, discarded, rusty, forgotten. I thought of all the waste places and products of our changing technology and consumer habits. I photographed it thinking of the New Testament imagery of “Milk” as first spiritual food, of people who “carry” this food.  I thought of old age and the effects it would have on my body, damaged by 5 car accidents. I felt like a rusty old milk pail but was encouraged by an ancient promise of God spoken by Isaiah, “Even in old age I will carry you”. So I let the tree stump, a symbol of Jesus, carry pails. I created 7 (perfection) visible branch like milky wind waves flowing into and around the pails, which become 3 almost invisible beams passing through and under the pails. The pails are being carried into eternity ahead.

Highway Enveloped

Every day on the way to work I see trees hanging over towards the highway and love the look of the lines…almost a < shape. I wanted to photograph, draw and paint them.  “Highway Enveloped” began as a sketch with these “greater than, less than” lines in mind. Digital photos taken through the car window captured a “highway”.  I had also been thinking about and making images of rusty old vessels.  I liked the imagery in Isaiah’s words about God’s highway being in the heart of those who make waste places, like the Valley of Achor /Baca, into places of refreshment. I thought about his words, “I will make a road through the wilderness of the world for my people to go home” with walls of precious stones. So I paraphrased some ancient words that trigger hope in me, turning them into the  walls of precious stones surrounding the highway home.

I have used the same shape of the highway in the sky to trigger thoughts about heavens highways, sent messages and pathways. A message of hope for the wasteland.

Nasser Palangi

Nasser Palangi graduated in visual arts from Tehran University in 1984.  He pursued his education in painting and art education in Tehran while lecturing at different universities until 1998. At the beginning of the first Iran-Iraq war, he spent three years as a war artist, creating drawings, paintings and photographs and a series of mural paintings entitled My memory of the war for the congregational mosque of Khorramshahr, Iran. He has had many commissions and exhibited widely internationally throughout his career  He and his family have been based in Canberra since 2001.

nasser@palangimural.com

Transmigration, so vast in our times, has played a role in a disconnection from self.  Being uprooted, losing one’s culture causes a loss of identity for many people who then reach out to the object to provide some semblance of security in the midst of a sense of isolation and disconnection.  While there have been some advantages in the movement from one country to another, there have been significant losses to humanity as well. 

These works are part of a 5,000 strong body of work which presents many faces from many different countries of the world, collected during my travels from 1990 to 2005. The idea for these portraits came to me when I first encountered Western Society.  I was struck by the common experience and the similarity of expression on people’s faces across all cultures.  It was alien to my own experience of my culture and I was inspired and indeed impelled to start this collection.   Out of my exploration a new allegorical and symbolic form of art portraiture has developed.  These “Faces” show all the gamut of emotions experienced by people struggling with the challenges of the modern nihilistic period of our history.  Both positive and negative reactions are to be seen in the images presented in my new portraiture form. ”

The famous Persian poet, Rumi, said that when a person makes the object the centre of importance in life, the person takes on the characteristics of the object, becoming the object itself.

Louisa Abello

A graduate from the Australian National University School of Art and a respected community artist, Luisa uses photographic objects and popular cultural forms such as paint-by-numbers, greeting cards and magnetic address books to express and question notions of identity and cultural placement.

leabello@yahoo.com.au

These two images where taken in 2005 which was the year of my last visit to Temuco, my family’s home town in Chile.

While looking through a small window I was captured by a dark and misty area.

I had seen this place so many times before, but I had never noticed so much emptiness and abandonment at the same time.

My mind created the spiritual idea of coming home.

Anni Doyle Wawrzynczak (Curator)

Anni is an art historian, writer and curator with a degree in Art History and Curatorship (Honours) from the Australian National University. She is Belconnen Gallery’s resident curator and has worked with more than 100 artists from diverse backgrounds and curated over sixty exhibitions in the Gallery over the last three years. Previously Anni travelled extensively through Asia and the West Coast of the USA working as a jazz singer and documentary producer. She has lived in Canberra with her husband Jan and son Cal since 2000.

anni@homemail.com.au