Title: Secrets and Lies
Artist: Lili Wilkinson
2010
Date of exhibition: 03/12/10 to 31/12/10
Theme: Secrets and Lies
Medium: fabric, felt and thread

“Secrets and Lies”. The first thing I think of when I hear these words is: high school. Full of secrets. Full of lies. Who kissed who? Who has a secret crush on who? Who cheated on the Geography test? Why did he get suspended? Did you hear that she kissed a teacher? High school is when you have to keep secrets, share secrets, tell lies and believe them. The dog ate my homework. I had a doctor’s appointment. My uniform shrank in the wash.

When I think of high school, I think of the following five things:

-Hating maths and bemoaning its irrelevance
-trying and failing to express myself visually in Art and Textiles
-the messy and tangled nature of teen friendships
-wondering if that boy I liked would ever talk to me
-knowing that NOBODY HAD EVER FELT LIKE THIS BEFORE. EVER.

And this is what came out of that list. You will note in particular point #2 is still going strong. The hard-to-decipher formula is, I understand, actually a real formula. I’m afraid I cannot verify this for you, but for the curious, this is what it looks like:

9x – 7i > 3(3x – 7u)

9x – 7i > 9x – 7u
-9x            -9x

-7i  >  -21u
-7         -7

i <3 u

There you have it. Finally a mathematical equation I can get behind.

Title: Respect
Artist: Sarah Rudledge and ?
2010
Date of exhibition: 04/11/10 to 30/11/10
Theme: Respect
Medium: mixed media

Title: Pathways
Artist: Peter Coleman
2010
Date of exhibition: 13/08/10 to 31/08/10
Theme: Pathways
Medium: mixed media
Description:
Three dead birds led me to the first pieces of the puzzle.  The first bird was struck by a van as it hurried to work.  The second bird emerged from a book on a train, more lifeless then dead as it was moulded from plastic.  The third dead bird delivered the puzzle pieces along with an allen key and a knife.  Since then I have been scouring my world for the other pieces of the puzzle. The puzzle pieces appear when I identify a theme.  I pick up a tenuous thread and hold it gently.  If in my eagerness to find the next piece I pull on the thread it will snap and disintegrate and I will lose my way. I will follow these pathways until I find enough puzzle pieces for the picture to be revealed.

Title: Shabby Cabby Waltz
Artist: Sarah Rudledge
2010
Date of exhibition: 10/07/10 to 12/08/10
Theme: My family
Medium: coloured pencil
Description:

Title: What will I be today?
Artist: Peter Coleman
2010
Date of exhibition: 31/05/10 to 30/06/10
Theme: What will I be today?
Medium: mixed media
Description:
I roll out of bed and stumble toward the dress-up box.  I have to wait for the nocturnal fog of sleep to lift before I can determine what I will wear.  There are too many choices. I have to rummage through all these masks and coats, boots and hats, horns and tails.

What day is it today?  What do I need to do?   What will I be today?  Will I be content or disappointed?  Will I be happy or sad?  Will I be a success or a failure?

Do I have a choice in what I will become?  Will I go to sleep as one thing and wake up as something else?  If I don’t like what I am, can I change?  Should I find a quiet corner and construct a cocoon out of spit, and hair, and paper, and change into something better?

Will I be forced to transmute into something that I have no control over?  Will the light of a full moon hit my eyes and trigger a cascade of events that will result in me being uninhibited, out of control and free?  What will I be today?

Past work

Title: Private in public
Artist: Kim Pickburn and Sal O’Keefe
2009
Date of exhibition: 28/04/10 to 12/05/10
Theme: Private in public
Medium: mixed media
Description:
“The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed. The whole point of photography is that you are not intervening in their lives, only visiting them”. (Susan Sontag, On Photography)

These photographs were a few of many taken on a trip in the US – evidence of a fascination with capturing people in public spaces unaware in seemingly banal, mundane everyday moments. The human landscape of places visited -  “souvenirs of daily life.”

This work explores the allure, ethics and power inherent when photographing people in public spaces, unbeknown to them. The supposed private moments we have when in public spaces – the café, bookshop, street, train, park – writing, reading, watching, thinking.

Our movements in public spaces are surveilled and documented daily and we are tagged, exhibited, exposed through social media. We can also be captured unaware through the unacknowledged observations of the lurking lenses of private photographers, legally.

‘Street photography’ developed in the 20^th century, depicting and documenting street culture and the everyday and commonplace, leaving behind a poignant record of daily life that lives on.  French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is considered the founder of street photography and modern photojournalism, “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to “trap” life  – to preserve life in the act of living”.

Despite ongoing ethical issues, and with increasing tightening of laws regarding privacy, photographers have fought to be able to maintain the right to continue with documentary or street photography within legal guidelines outlining the parameters of voyeurism and exploitation.

“I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do – that was one of my favourite things about it…and when I first did it felt very perverse”. (Diane Arbus)

The beauty in and compulsion to photograph these private moments, unbeknown to the subject/object, is in imagining you are freezing a glimpse of personality, emotion, expression that is not the public façade and persona that is reserved for a face to face, eye to eye interaction. It is not a face they would show the camera. There is the hope of revealing something more ‘real’ behind the shadow of this public face – the possibility of a human connectedness, an outsider’s observation.

The voyeuristic allure is unmistakable – the secrecy of this unseen documented record of a frozen expression, a moment in their life. There is an inherent power in that knowledge. This is also a documented moment in the photographer’s life – a trail, a map, a record of observations.

“…there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having the knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.” (Susan Sontag)

But it is only an interpretation of reality, of a person or a moment. We project our own meaning onto the image – leaving the photographer or viewer open to speculation, fantasy, curiosity. We devise our own stories about what we see, about who or what is frozen in time. A search for a connection, a meaning, sameness in our differences – a commonality in the human landscape.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability…by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt”. ( Susan Sontag, On Photography)

Reference:
Susan Sontag, On Photography, Penguin Books, 1977

This is particularly the case if you’ve spent the last month wandering around the Northern Hemisphere absorbing a lot of art and defrosting your extremities.

So while the Wardrobe is gathering a new year of artists and work please enjoy this beautiful piece by Rob Ryan. Entitled Can We Shall We, it is currently showing in the exhibition Slash: Paper under the knife in New York’s Museum of Art and Design. The exhibition is a collection of works with paper. The range of techniques is astounding; showcasing cut paper, collage, installation, sculpture, altered books, photography and animation. It was a truly inspiring display of work and will be on until April 4, 2010.

I had the good fortune to see this work while I was there, and the artist and his team were kind enough to share this image with me upon my return. I hope you enjoy the poetry, the intricacy and the delightful hope of this piece. Keep an eye out for Rob Ryan’s new web site coming soon.

See, read, talk and enjoy,
Cressida Bradley

Title: Can We Shall We
Artist: Rob Ryan
Date of exhibition: February 2010
Medium: cut paper

The Wardrobe is an exhibition space curated by Skylab. Changing fortnightly, the works can be seen if you go to the corner of Smith and Charles Streets, Fitzroy, Melbourne. We hope the works inspire something in you, feel free to chat…

Past Work

Title: Step into my office, baby
Artist: Alan Fitzpatrick
2009
Date of exhibition: 09/12/09 to 18/12/09
Theme: Metamorphosis
Medium: mixed media
Description:
A guillotined Esselte Spirax 70% recycled A4 ruled note book. Several luminous markers. Flowers freshly cut from the office, from me to you.

Past Work

Title: Untitled
Artist: The Social Studio
2009
Date of exhibition: 12/11/09 to 8/12/09
Medium: mixed media
Description:

In 2009 Midnightsky made a lovely new friend, The Social Studio, to whom we would like to introduce you.

Showcasing the style and talent of Melbourne’s young refugee community, The Social Studio produces clothes for sale using recycled and excess manufacturing materials.

The studio develops vocational and social skills whilst inspiring an imaginative, empowered and connected community. It’s an annual season of giving that’s 12 months long.

To say thanks to you and Merry Christmas we’ve given generously to support the work of The Social Studio.

If you’d like to give too, please go to The Social Studio

“A spinner treats spindles only as a means for spinning, and flax as the material he spins. But in the process itself, the fact that they are the products of past labour becomes irrelevant… on the contrary, it is by their imperfections that the means of production in any process bring to our attention their character of being the products of past labour. A knife which fails to cut a piece of thread which keeps on snapping, forcibly remind us of Mr.A, the cutler, or Mr.B, the spinner. In a successful product, the role played by past labour in mediating its useful properties has been extinguished.”

Past Work

Title: Again
Artist: Sarah Rudledge
2009
Date of exhibition: 26/10/09 to 1/11/09
Theme: Again
Medium: mixed media
Description:
This project began one day when I was lying on the floor of our studio feeling a little creatively blocked. I took a bunch of small price tags from my box of ‘stuff’ and decided to do some self-portraits. With such a limited space to draw in I was quickly moving from tag to tag. Taking some images of myself across several tags before another idea would arrive and then I was off in another direction.

I enjoyed the freedom of interpreting my portrait again and again and the different ideas that would come when I just ‘did’ instead of thinking too much about it.

The deck chair pattern in the background represents the lighthearted playfulness of the portrait activity, reminding me of when I was very young and had the capacity to play the same game or listen to the same song over and over again.