Mono (Photography Exhibition Review)
Sunday, August 28th, 2011
The Hobart Photographic Society opened their Mono exhibition on Friday night in the Sidespace Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart. It runs from 23 – 31 August, 2011.
The collection of black and white photography includes 34 prints from 17 local photographers and some stand-out favourites. My trawl around five full circuits of the Sidespace Gallery walls allowed me time to investigate, deconstruct and consider the influences behind each piece.
One of those stand-out photographers surprised me because we share the same locale and have never spoken two words in passing over a decade. Suellen Cook’s work ‘Boomer Bay’ and ‘The Starters Box’ were among the strongest in the exhibition incorporating strong composition and an aesthetic eye for capturing the quiet spaces between breaths in the Tasmanian waterscape.
I absolutely loved Cheryl Brumfitt’s dramatic portrait ‘Willow Court’; the entire right side is dominated by the crumbling entrance pillar. The sky is sombre and foreboding. Of the many Willow Court photographs that I’ve seen over the years, Cheryl Brumfitt may best capture the defunct institution’s ominous history of torture and sorrow.
Another stand-out piece – and don’t get me wrong as there are more strong photographs in the Mono exhibition than I can individually identify – is ‘Down the Line’. The perspective is almost cliche, one of standing on the tracks while the railway line converges into the distance… at the same moment the photograph also takes in the vast expanse of emptiness that is far from uncommon in the Tasmanian midlands. There are juxtapositions between a barren untamed landscape & a furtile destination. Between the nothingness of being here to the hope of something at the end of the line.
Victoria Henderson put up a beautiful photograph in ‘Fisherman 1′ that I thought worthy of note. The fisherman’s body sits within the circle of his net almost precisely at the bottom right junction of thirds. The minimalist background of the river, I would guess to be in China or South East Asia, fades back from the immediacy of this subject’s daily life and survival. I found it to be a particularly strong composition that imparted a tranquil emotion.
In the minimalist camp the Gustavo Bodini photograph ‘Sea Change’ consisting of the tension between two objects on the sea – if I recall it was a bird and a beacon – compelled further investigation. The beauty of minimalism done well lays beyond the aesthetic… this piece draws the viewer into that tension as a perfectly balanced point in time.
