M.33 / Exhibition archive

JANINA GREEN

From the series Vacuum, 1993
Type C photograph

Vacuum is a set of 14 vintage chromogenic prints made in 1993 and originally shown at the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.

‘The middle class white housewife is the dominant model of femininity and her role has been constructed around domestic cleanliness. Her home has been the setting for her performance as virtuous wife and mother. But housework also taints the character of the woman, linking femininity with dirtiness and linking dirtiness to the “abject” and to those things we are constantly spitting out and wiping away’.

This twin notion of the feminine as simultaneously pure yet intrinsically soiled is at the heart of Janina Green’s densely collaged layered photographs with their richly retro modernist colour schemes of an idealistic era and a lone silhouetted figure in many of the works, drawing us into the present.

20 May – 11 June 2011

To be opened by: Naomi Cass,
Director Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm Thursday 19th May 2011

MARGARET LAWRENCE GALLERY
40 Dodds Street
Southbank Victoria 3006
T: +61 3 9685 9400

Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat, 12pm – 5pm
Saturday 1.00 – 4.00pm.

www.vcam.unimelb.edu.au/gallery

JANE BURTON, CHRISTOPHER KÖLLER AND DARREN SYLVESTER

Jane Burton, from Vanishing Point
Type C Photograph 110cm x 110cm (detail)
Courtesy of Dickerson Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney

LOADED brings together three Melbourne artists from quite distinct generations – each with a reputation for creating visually engaging photographs: Jane Burton, Christopher Köller and Darren Sylvester.
All three are known for making work which is somewhat enigmatic or elusive and which while representational in nature, is nevertheless open to many readings and multiple narratives. Work that is in fact loaded. For each of the artists the surface appearance of their photographs is paramount. It is here where both the pleasure and the mystery reside. While the images are highly seductive, they are by no means superficial; each artist considers contemporary concerns and ideas – albeit in quite individual ways.

LOADED is part of the 2005 Gallery 101 Exhibition Calendar and is presented in collaboration with guest curator Helen Frajman.

16 April – 14 May, 2005

GALLERY 101
Ground level, 101 Collins Street, Melbourne Victoria
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 10am – 5pm,
Saturday 12 – 4pm
Gallery 101 Website

Still from Your call is important to us, Helen Frajman, 2004 (video)

New Work from M.33: Helen Frajman, Tania Jovanovic, Christopher Köller, Peter Milne and Matthew Sleeth

Curated by Helen Frajman.

The Bottom Line is a group exhibition which through video and photography examines fundamental values in a time when the Bottom Line rules.
The work ranges from the subtly philosophical as in Matthew Sleeth’s meditative The Big Picture, to the joyously pleasurable in the sensuous colour images of Tania Jovanovics Below the Waist which focus on music, dance, emotion and the body.
Peter Milne recreates key fragments from the life of an imaginary media magnate in The Reptile while Christopher Köller confronts his mortality, fear and loneliness in an evocative series based on recollections of a childhood illness,
A Spot of Bother.
Finally – curator Helen Frajman presents a video piece, Your call is important to us, which deals with a curious contemporary paradox. While we live in a time when we feel insignificant and helpless, a time of increasing electronic surveillance and invasion, we are more than willing to perform our private lives in public via the mobile phone.

SPAN GALLERIES
45 Flinders Lane Melbourne
March 30, 2004 – April 10, 2004
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday 11.00 to 5.00
Saturday – 11.00 to 4.00

To be Opened on Tuesday March 30, 5 to 7pm by Daniel Palmer, Curator of Projects at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne and lecturer in the School of Art History at the University of Melbourne.

Tania Jovanovic, Chris Köller Peter Milne, Matthew Sleeth

Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Federation Square, Flinders St, Melbourne
Thursday 6th November 2003
Time: Drinks at 7.30 with projection: 8 – 9.30pm

Tickets: $15 Concession $12
Available @ Australian Centre for the Moving Image
03-8663 2583

In conjunction with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), M.33 presents Projected – a rare opportunity to enjoy a combination of exceptional photographic images projected onto a cinema screen, accompanied by a specially commissioned sound track.

On November 6, 2003, M.33 will celebrate its 10th birthday with a one night only screening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, Melbourne.

This event will take full advantage of the state of the art facilities at ACMI and promises audiences a fresh new way to experience an extraordinary breadth and range of photography. Work to be projected will be a mixture of still images, multi-media pieces and video. A sound track mixed specifically for the evening by Ben Green will contribute to the theatrical ambience.

Expect images from across 10 year’s of M.33’s existence, including favourites such as Aboriginal photographer, Ricky Maynard’s take on inner city indigenous life – Urban Diary, photographs from the The Bank Book, selections from Matthew Sleeth’s Tour of Duty and Tania Jovanovic’s Cuba Que Bola!as well as excerpts from Peter Milne’s documentation of the Melbourne Comedy Festival – Fools’ Paradise and Christopher Köller’s notorious video piece Blow.

New work by M.33 artists: Tania Jovanovic, Christopher Köller, Peter Milne and Matthew Sleeth will also be shown, as well as previously unseen vintage work.

The event will be followed by an After Party and the launch ofhome + away by Matthew Sleeth at FEDDISH, Federation Square, Melbourne @ 10pm

PSC Website

MATTHEW SLEETH

Untitled from FEET, Tokyo, 2002
(outdoor lightbox)

The images in the exhibition FEET were taken on the Tokyo subway in October 2002. They are images of reasonably random feet – usually those belonging to whoever happened to be sitting opposite the photographer.

They touch on themes such as consumerism (a great town for shoes) and the way men and women occupy public space differently. Although this can probably be observed in many countries, it seems emphasised in Japan: the men are sprawled over their seats with crotches thrust forward while the women tend to fold themselves into the smallest space possible.

CITYLIGHTS
Hosier Lane
Melbourne, CBD
5th August – 15th September 2003

CHRISTOPHER KÖLLER

Christopher Köller’s Aberrant is a suite of videos and still photographs that explore bizarre and compulsive behaviours conjured out of everyday routines and objects.

Taking as his starting point newspaper reports which have caught his attention, Köller has created five video re-enactments which variously convey the sheer weirdness, peculiar drama and pathos of these extreme presentations of the human condition.

Aberrant is installed in 5 different rooms of 69 Smith Street and washes over us as an unsettling, creepy, sometimes funny sometimes tragic wave composed of the extraordinary actions of ordinary people.

69 SMITH STREET
69 Smith St
Fitzroy VIC 3065
7th – 25th May 2003
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Sunday 12pm – 5pm

WHEN NATURE FORGETS

Peter Milne’s dolls, dummies and mannequins in historical displays simper, strut and smoulder; their often abject and eroticised condition arousing strong emotional responses from the viewer. The strange jaunty sound track accompanying the audio visual presentation adds to the carnival atmosphere while further unsettling and disturbing. Is History and the entire documentary process here to be read as an act of titilation?

STILLS GALLERY
36 Gosbell St
Paddington NSW 2021
23rd April – 24th May 2003
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11 – 6
Stills Gallery Website

CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY
205 Johnston St
Fitzroy VIC 3065
3rd October – 1st November 2003
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11 – 5
CCP Website

ABC website

HELEN FRAJMAN

Untitled From Baby Blues, 2001 by Konrad Winkler

While we may see thousands of images a day, some photographs have the power to truly capture our imagination.

M.33 Director Helen Frajman spoke to people around Australia who work with collections of contemporary Australian photography in public museums and galleries. She asked them to choose an image that they had trouble shaking off, which persists in their memory, which in effect has ‘haunted them’ – an image which while out of sight, is not out of mind.

Out of Sight aims to give a sense of the richness and depth of Australian photographs in our public collections as well as an opportunity to consider the ways in which we experience the visual.

Presented by The Space , ABC Arts Online

ABC WEBSITE

MATTHEW SLEETH

American Transport Helicopter, East Timor, 1999

A selection of images from Matthew Sleeth’s book , TOUR OF DUTY, are now online on the ABC’s website accompanied by audio from Matthew Sleeth.

Presented by The Space, ABC Arts Online

MEGAN PONSFORD

Untitled from ASPIC, 2001
Duratran

ASPIC consists of a series of images taken in an up-market nursing home and presented as small lightboxes in a darkened room. Despite the opulence and beauty on display, despite the grandeur and luxury, a sterile uneasy silence pervades the work. There is no evidence of these facilties being used, no sign indeed of any human habitation. All is not as it would seem – objects that should be inviting resonate with menace and a hint of melancholy. Seductive yet desolate, frozen in a perpetual present, these views from a sumptuous waiting room to the after-life, play with photography’s own intrinsic nature.

Helen Macpherson Smith Project Space
CCP – Centre for Contemporary Photography
205 Johnston Street
Fitzroy VIC 3065
12th April – 4th May 2002
Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 11-5

CCP Website