Event Review

Whats In A Face?

Created by Gladys Amelia (3862)

Whats In A Face?
Aspects of Photography Location: Photography Gallery Photography Gallery is dedicated to the display of the art gallery of NSW 4500 - strong collection of photographs. The collection covers the inception of the medium in the 19th Century until now. Each year photography gallery will have three exhibitions, focusing on Australian and International photography. It presenting the work of individual artists and group of artists, and explore themes as well as specific periods in photographic history. Directions: 1. Head towards the rear of the gallery 2. Take the escalators down two levels 3. Turn left and left again 4. The photography gallery is behind the large free standing will Accessible: 1. Take the lift (on the left side) down one level, to level 2 2. Exit into the photography gallery

Photography Gallery has an aim to expand our understanding of the ever-changing nature of photgraphy - from the 21st Cantury which form its birth, changed the course of art forever.

Whats In A Face?
Aspects of Photography Event Name : Whats In A Face? 24 September 2011 - 5 February 2012 I Free Admission

Name of artists : a. Australian Artists : Paul Foelsche, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Carol Jerrems, Destiny Deacon, Darren Sylvester, Petrina Hicks b. International Artits : Man Ray, Edward Weston, Yamawaki Iwao, Nan Gol din, Ben Cauchi, Loretta Lux, Sandy Edwards

Whats In A Face? is an exhibition of more than 45 photography from the Art Gallery of NSW collection. It focuses on some of the curcial points in the history of photographic depictions of human face, ranging from studio portraiture in the late 19th Century to contemporary practices today.

All portraits reveal something of the sitter, the photographer and also of us as viewers, but none reveal a whole and complete being, no matter how much we believe this could be so. This is part of the enduring fascination with the photographic portrait, which purports to be an exact likeness but operates more accurately as a metaphor for the self and how that self might exist in the world at a particular point in time. Judy Annear, senior curator, photographs

Carol Jerrems
(194921 Feb 1980)

Carol Joyce Jerrems (1949-1980), photographer, was born on 14 March 1949 at Ivanhoe, Melbourne. Training : a. Prahran Technical School in 1967-70, graduating with a diploma of art and design. b. The Technical Teachers College, Hawthorn (1971) Jerrems was interested in the expressive possibilities of the photographic medium. She declared that she was an artist whose tool of expression is the camera. She concentrated on photographing people; her subjects included her students, and her friends and acquaintances. Her first photographs were documentary in style, but by the mid-1970s the scenes she photographed were often contrived. She used a non-exploitative approach, based on the consent of her subjects. For Jerrems, photography had a crucial social role: the society is sick and I must help change it. Her photographs were a means of bringing people together and offered affirmative views of certain aspects of contemporary life. With Virginia Fraser, she published A Book About Australian Women (Melbourne, 1974), to which she contributed the photographs.

Personal exhibitions : a. National Gallery of Victoria (1973) b. The Arts Council Gallery, Sydney (1974), c. the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (1976 and 1978) Groups exhibitions : a. Erotica (with Henry Talbot) at Brummels Gallery of Photography, Melbourne (1972) b. Womanvision at the Sydney Filmakers Co-op (1973) c. Heroes and Anti-Heroes (with Rennie Ellis), at the Photographers Gallery , Melbourne (1975 and 1978) d. Four Australian Women, at the Photographers Gallery, Melbourne, in 1975 and 1978 respectively. e. Macquarie University, Sydney, commissioned her in 1977 to produce a folio of photographs that expressed the spirit of the university.

In 1975 Jerrems was awarded an overseas travel grant from the Visual Arts Board of the Australia Council and an experimental film grant from the Australian Film Commission. Her 16-mm black-and-white film, Hangin About, was completed in 1978. She also produced the publicity and production stills for In Search of Anna (1979), directed by Esben Storm. For some years Jerrems practised and taughg yoga. The photographs she took in 1978 at the Satyananda Ashram, Mangrove Mountain, New South Wales, were among the last she exhibited. In 1979 she fell ill with Budd-Chiari syndrome. She died on 21 February 1980 at Prahran and was cremated. Her archive of photographs was donated to the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Although one critic regarded her work as unevenshe took a casual approachJerremss talents as a photographer were widely recognized. With her camera firmly pointed at the heart of things, she produced a body of photographs that symbolized the hopes and aspirations of the counter-culture in Australia in the 1970s. The retrospective exhibition, Living in the 70s: Photographs by Carol Jerrems, mounted by the N.G.A., toured Australia in 1990-91.

Vale Street
(Carol Jerrems - 1975)

Title : Vale Street #2 Year : 1975 Media : Photograph Medium : Gelatin silver photograph Dimensions: 20.1 x 30.4cm image; 30.2 x 38.0cm sheet : 0 - Whole; 22 x 16; mount

Signature & date : Signed and dated l.r. sheet, pencil Carol Jerrems 75 and c.r. verso, pencil Carol Jerrems. 1975. Copyright : Ken and Lance Jerrems Location : Photography Gallery

A classical image of the 1970s, Vale Street #2 has lost none of its capacity to enchant and disturb in the intervention years. It can be read as a sociological document, its a subjective work of art. Jerremss photo seems to disclose the very souls of its subjects. As they respond, each in their individual fashion to the regarding presence of the camera lens and the figures compose themselves, without give attitudes. The young woman confidence set against the reticence of boyish companions. As a portrait of relationships, Vale Street speaks of gender relations, adolescent sexuality.

Lyn Gailey
(Carol Jerrems - 1976) Title : Lyn Gailey Year : 1976 Media : Photograph Medium : Gelatin silver photograph Dimensions: 30.3 x 20.1cm image; 38.0 x 30.2cm sheet : 0 - Whole; 22 x 16; mount Signature & date : Signed and dated l.r. sheet and c. verso, pencil Carol Jerrems, 1976. Copyright : Ken and Lance Jerrems Location : Photography Gallery

Work of Carol Jerrems captures a particular moment of counterculture optimism in Australia around the 1970s. Jerrems work appeared from her strong commitment to feminism and broader social change: My main interest in photographic art, as in living, is giving... This society is sick and I must help change it. The women in her photographs are comfortable and at ease with their bodies, she step confidently towards the camera and the viewer with a relaxed athmosphere. Jerrems often worked with consenting subjects, rejecting what she saw as the exploitative consequences of some documentary street photography.

Cronulla
(Carol Jerrems - 1977)

Title : Cronulla Year : 1977 Media : Photograph Medium : Gelatin silver photograph Dimensions: 20.1 x 30.3cm image; 30.4 x 38.0cm sheet : 0 - Whole; 22 x 16; mount

Signature & date : Signed and dated l.r. sheet., pencil Jerrems, 1977 and c. verso, pencil Carol Jerrems 1977. Copyright : Ken and Lance Jerrems Location : Photography Gallery

Carol Jerremss photographs are emblematic of a particular moment in Australia, that of 1970s counterculture optimism. Most of her work between 1972 and 1978 she captures friends, intimates, colleagues, all invariably of young people such as artists, actors and musicians and some of the freedoms and anxieties of their less restricted lifestyles. Jerremss work contained her strong commitment to feminism and broader social change. As she states I really like people I try to reveal something about people, because they are so separate, so isolated; maybe its a way of bringing people together, by showing them photographs of each other, a sort of communication.

Cronulla is a photgraph of two shirtless men in a nondescript room. The two men stare directly at the camera, defiant in both gaze and posture, as if they were confort someone who has disturbed moment of their private intimacy. The sense of unease is enhanced by close cropping. The men dominate the frame, implicating the viewer in the act of looking. As if the photograph appears spontaneous, but in actuality Jerrems positioned the two men in a contrived situation meant to suggest a homoerotic encounter. From 1975 Jerrems began to increasingly cast her friends in a number of situations, thus questioning the relationship between photography and truth. Friends like Esben Storm and Dusan Werner, Cronullas subjects, became adept at projecting a certain image. This is particularly true of Storm, who was Jerremss long term boyfriend and reappears throughout her work in a number of roles.

Juliet holding Vale Street

(Carol Jerrems - 1976) Title : Juliet holding Vale Street Year : 1976 Media : Photograph Medium : Gelatin silver photograph Dimensions: 30.4 x 20.1cm image; 37.9 x 30.3cm sheet : 0 - Whole; 22 x 16; mount Signature & date : Signed and dated l.r. sheet, pencil Jerrems, 1976. Copyright : Ken and Lance Jerrems Location : Photography Gallery

Juliet holding Vale Street is an example of such a staging where the subject holds one of Jerremss earlier photographs, itself an ambitious reading of female liberation in which the assertive figure of a young woman is set in relief against the menacing and shadowy presence of two lurking boys.

Sandy Edwards
(1948 present)

Sandy Edwards (1948-present), photographer, was born at Bluff, New Zealand. Training : a. Edwards studied film there for 1 year, 1972-3, 1972- 1973 Slade School Fine Art, London b. Majored in psychology, 1969 Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney, NSW

Sandy Edwards is one of Australias leading documentary photographers. Her photograph have been widely exhibited and published. Her work focuses on the portrayal of women and Aboriginal issues. Her best known work Paradise is a Place is an evocative black and white series about a young girls growth to adulthood set on the far south coast of NSW. This highly successful exhibition has been published by Random House with an accompanying story by Gillian Mears. Her series Welcome to Brewarrina, is an intimate portrait of the Aboriginal community in the NSW country town of Brewarrina.

Indelible (2004), was a 10-year retrospective of her more personal work. The resulting exhibition was a meditation on portraiture, exploring themes at the intersection of human lives: trust and relationships, growing up and ageing. With a magnificent quality of colour and light, Edwards work tells the story of not just her life, but touches on universal truths about our interconnectedness and the ultimate importance of relationships in life. From July 2005 - July 2006 Sleep late from Indelible is the feature image on Melbournes Mirvac Yarras Edge Tower billboard. First Love (1999), a series on a first long term relationship, was exhibited as part of Close Relations at the Australian Centre for Photography and Self Assured, on teenage girls, which marked a move into colour. Her work is held in collections at the Art Gallery of NSW, Parliament House Canberra and the National Gallery of Australia. Sandy Edwards is also the curator of two major photographic public art programs - Sydney Airport 2000 Art Project with Linda Slutzkin, and Sydney Looking Forward, part of AMP and Sydney City Councils project Art & About. These images are a selection from the artists portfolio. More images are available for viewing in the gallerys Print Room.

Portrait Marina Looking

(Sandy Edwards - 1994) Title : Portrait Marina looking from Paradise is a Place Year : 1994 Printed 1995 Media : Photograph Medium : Gelatin silver photograph Dimensions: 34.1 x 22.6cm image; 40.8 x 30.4cm sheet : 0 - Whole; 27 x 22; mount Signature & date : Signed and dated l.r. verso, pencil Sandy Edwards 95. Copyright : Sandy Edwards Location : Photography Gallery

Paradise is a place is a series of works documenting the childhood and early adolescence of Marina, a friend of the photographer. The photographs were taken over an eight year period in the 1990s, at Tanja, on the far South Coast of New South Wales, where Edwards took her annual summer holidays with Marina, her family, and various friends. These images portray the innocence of a childs life before the pressures of adulthood. Marinas pleasure and ease within her environment are apparent in various photographs as she cradles a goose, contemplates a goanna and swims in the ocean. The series suggests a simple, carefree time in a coastal idyll and invites nostalgic thoughts of childhood. However it also contains overtones of loss. In Portrait of Marina looking, the central character stares pensively at the viewer, hand supporting chin. In contrast to earlier, playful works, this photograph hints at the loss of childhood naivety that accompanies the progress through adolescence to the rigours of adulthood.

Marr and Marina at the dam

(Sandy Edwards - 1992)

Title Year Media Medium

: Marr and Marina at the dam from Paradise is a Place : 1992 Printed 1996 : Photograph : Gelatin silver photograph Dimensions: 22.9 x 34.2cm image; 30.3 x 40.5cm sheet : 0 - Whole; 27 x 22; mount

Signature & date : Signed and dated l.r. verso, pencil Sandy Edwards 96. Copyright : Sandy EdwardsLocation : Photography Gallery

The series also explores the relationships of Marina to the people in her life. Marina and Marr at the dam depicts the girl looking up at her father as he appears to be demonstrating stone skimming. Marina is focused on his action, the image capturing the unquestioning trust and reliance of a child to her father.