Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place & home

Posts tagged ‘Museum of Contemporary Art’

Warrang, Brook Andrew, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: “Warrang” by Brook Andrew (Sydney MCA)

This post is the fifth and last of five Fotoeins Fridays in June, all from Australia’s most populous city, Sydney.

As a permanent commission of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Brook Andrew’s 2012 work “Warrang” is prominent near the museum’s entrance. Portraits by resident and visitor under the arrow might seem obvious or simple, but the artist is asking questions about the idea of shared (or dominated) history for both indigenous and colonizing populations at the arrow’s location.

EDIT: Brook Andrew is the first Australian indigenous artist to be appointed director of the upcoming Biennale Sydney in 2020 (ABC Arts).

I made the photo above on 5 May 2013 with the Canon 450D, 50-prime, and settings: 1/320-sec, f/8, ISO400, and 50mm focal length (80mm full-frame equivalent). I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land called Australia, and the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation as traditional custodians of the place called Sydney. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie on fotoeins DOT com at https://wp.me/p1BIdT-bGo.

70000th photo, at the MCA in Sydney

I’m making good progress with my five-year old Canon EOS450D camera.

As I continue to click away, I’m aware of the grind on both camera and lens(es). But with some luck and care, I’ve flipped the “number counter” on my camera a seventh time with over 70000 exposures to date.

I headed out to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Australia in Sydney to visit the “JEFF WALL Photographs” exhibition. Jeff Wall is also from my hometown of Vancouver, Canada, and while I was in Vancouver earlier this year, I’d seen a number of his photos on display in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection. With the exhibition in Sydney, the opportunity arose for a coherent perspective of his work.

The following is one of my favourite Jeff Wall pieces, called “A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai)”, which is on loan from the Tate London for the MCA exhibition. Wall’s work is based on a Japanese woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai, Ejiri in Suruga Province (Sunshû Ejiri), AC 1830-33, housed at the British Museum.

Jeff Wall: Photographs exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney

Photo of a photo: “A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai)”, by Jeff Wall, 1993.

Beautifully constructed and a wonderful homage to Hokusai’s original, Wall’s photograph is presently mounted in one of the last rooms of the exhibition; so, there’s plenty of room for people to wander into the space and to admire the scale and movement of the photograph. With that in mind, I stood towards the back of the room, and I began photographing people standing in front of the photograph. It didn’t take long to find two people standing in the right place and leaning towards each other in conversation, the visitors providing complementary well-timed superposition with the photograph.

Jeff Wall: Photographs exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney

Quiet discourse by visitors, and quietly, my 70000th exposure. At least his hat’s still on …

The “JEFF WALL Photographs” exhibition is free of charge at the MCA Australia from 1 May to 28 July 2013. The MCA Australia can be reached with CityRail to Circular Quay station or with Sydney Ferries to Circular Quay Ferry Wharf.

PostScript: after posting, I realized I made a dumb mistake with counting; what’s discussed above is the 67000th click. The actual “rollover” occurred a few weeks later with the following set of photographs at the VIVID Sydney festival.

Previous rollovers :
•   15000th photo with the 450D/XSi in Berlin, Germany
•   25000th photo with the 450D/XSi in Vancouver, Canada
•   50000th photo with the 450D/XSi in Berlin, Germany
•   60000th photo with the 450D/XSi in Vancouver, Canada

I made the photos above on 5 May 2013 with the 450D along with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com.

%d bloggers like this: