‘Some Dream’ combines photographs of people in moments of contemplation and introspection with details and accents of the city in which they live. This combination of inward thought and outward, abstract reflection has a haunting, dream-like quality. Using predominantly analogue cameras and 35mm film, Christopher’s images glisten with colour and light.
The further in age I get from teenagers, the more I like them.
The years between 15 and 17 are when we change and develop in ways that shape who we are for the rest of our lives. This was a tumultuous time for me: I was wild and nothing could stop me. It’s a period I never want to revisit, but the experience allows me, as an adult, to understand how hard it can be for others.
I connect with my subjects through social media. The relationships I form become integral to my photography: these teens allow me into their lives to photograph them without artifice, showing incredible openness and vulnerability. I share my own experiences with them. Our friendship develops and I become a sounding board, someone to text late at night, to tag on Facebook and pay attention. I become the person I needed in my life when I was that age.
In this long-form, ongoing series I use portraiture to humanise a generation caught between traditional expectations and the strong push by contemporary society to grow up fast. These teens show what life is like in an era when validation comes from a virtual world.
“Melburnians” is a series of photographs taken on the city streets of Melbourne between 2007-2015. It captures locals going about their daily lives in various states of relaxation, exercise, contemplation, conversation, work and transit.
Since March 2015, I’ve spent five months, over four separate trips, to the Kingdom of Nepal. I originally arrived on a three-month tourist visa, and intended to continue on to other parts of Southern and Southeast Asia. But my plans were waylaid by the devastating earthquake that struck the country on 25 April. Stranded for five days in a mountainous valley above the site of a catastrophic avalanche, I documented what I saw with the only thing I had been able to salvage from my ruined guesthouse bedroom—my camera. This experience marked the beginning of a deep and irrevocable connection with the country and its stories.
@ St Heliers Street Gallery, Abbotsford Convent
Opening Friday 7 April, 5-8pm
Mifumi (2016). Archival pigment print from 3D model. 140 x 100 cm.
Jacqueline Felstead’s video and photogrammetric works attempt to map impossible states - such as an hour of someone’s time, or the view from above while on the ground. This experimentation renews a (once photographic) conversation about the possibility and desire for replication, and about how such replicas relate to knowing and understanding where one is.
Jacqueline Felstead is winner of the 2017 Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. Felstead has been awarded an Asialink Residency to Objectif’s, Singapore with the support of the Australia Council and a studio residency to Banff Centre, Canada. She holds an MFA (Monash), B.A. (Hons) in Media Art (RMIT) and Social Science and is completing a PhD at Victorian College of the Arts. Recent solo exhibitions include I am here (West Space); Gatwick Private Hotel (VAC); Everything (Objectifs, Singapore); Small Worlds (Curator, Substation, Singapore); Because I Know You… (Curator, Counihan Gallery) and group shows include Dots and Loops (Evans Contemporary, Toronto).
www.jacquelinefelstead.com
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As a symbolic gesture, a small seedless mandarin tree has been taken out of a pot. Soil removed and momentarily replanted in the grey mud on a beach in Melbourne.
Saturday is the day of reparations. We begin with the caulking, stripping back the wood with care, hearts’ cinders flaring. We begin with the pith of the cocoa nut, in such profusion here. The skin tightens, loosens, with the presence and absence of moisture. The tongue, so voluble on the open sea, shrinks. The soul stops—cauterised. We are many and few on this blessed isle, measuring with what tools remain. We persist and dissolve with the breeze.
Of these things I dream—to hold a woman. To be consumed by fever.
lundi: En bateau
Sometimes, as adults, we fail to grow out of childish habits. The stories we share are laden with false exaggeration and hypocrisy. Yet sometimes, despite the seemingly unbelievable content, our stories are real.
We confide in each other our deepest secrets, our darkest desires, our truths and our faults to try to make sense - to better understand each other and ourselves - and to accept that which presents itself to us.
The consuming nature of love is still persistent even when the love has gone.
It shows itself in tired eyes and a heavy heart.
It fills the mind with an emptiness that seems beyond unbearably full.
It stays with us even after time should have healed its lingering presence.
Love behaves like a bitter lesson, though one seldom learnt. And so we find ourselves stepping in the same potholes along the same path, strangely never readjusting our emotional compass to detour that which we’ve already traversed.
This body of work has evolved from three parts, bearing the titles of songs about love gone wrong: “Old Flames Are Like Dead Matches”, “Game For Fools” and “A Change Is Gonna Come”. Literally, this series is a labour of love; it concerns itself with dying love and its impossible weight.
I make this work so that you can get lost in it, or perhaps even find yourself in it, and of course, I make this work for me.
As women we share stories to liberate ourselves from them and the circumstances around them; a way of connecting our past to our present to furnish the transformation of our future.
These conversations prove delicate and fierce, graceful and raw. They are confessional therapies cradling powerful voices.
Shattered hearts and spilled tears over conversations and text messages,
Loaded memories of time spent treading voices of estranged lovers-
Composing the demise of love, through the sensitivity of photography.
LISTENING TO
Benny Tones, Nevermind Feat. Mara Tk
Electric Wire Hustle, Gimme That Kinda
Erykah Badu, In Love With You Feat. Stephen Marley
Fat Freddy’s Drop, Lose Myself In You
Fertile Ground, Naked
Flying Lotus, Tea Leaf Dancers Feat. Andreya Triana
Jamie Lidell, Game For Fools
Hooves & JPS, Nevermind Remix
Oakley Grenell, Moving On
Pharoahe Monch, So Good
Tweet, Iceberg
The Big Payback, Cosmic Travelling
Waajeed, Busta Feat. J Dilla
The Nextmen, Let it Roll Feat. Alice Russell
And too many more to mention…
As a way of describing the countries in which these photographs were taken, I have used the contemporary acronym W.E.I.R.D. (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) and negated it.
— Pia Johnson
Shen Wei, Glory Box, 2014
Pia Johnson: Whether it’s landscapes, portraits, objects or self-portraits all of your photographs reveal an intimacy and sense of loneliness about them. For me, they speak about notions of identity and place, and a shifting sense of belonging/not belonging. Why do you think this is the case, and I wonder if it stems from living in a country that you didn’t grow up in?
18 + 19 February 2017
Over two days UNLESS YOU WILL gathers local and international photographers, book makers, thinkers, curators, publishers, and enthusiasts together for a unique event at RMIT University in Melbourne. Part conference and part symposium, the weekend will be a relaxed, interactive and inclusive place for re-imagining our way of making and sharing photography.
Book your tickets here.
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On March 27, 1975 AC/DC took to the stage for two shows at Broadmeadows Town Hall.
Imbedded, dormant in the walls, lay the remnants of life and the stains of activity. So many touched these walls, walked these floors. Sounds bounce. Voices sang. Bodies moved. The traces lay finely dusted in memory.
It was here I began my search for Bon Scott - in the detritus and discarded.
Cove is an experimental short film that uses a minimalist narrative to explore the connections, or lack of, between neighbours in a small cul-de-sac. I am interested in the intersections between cinema and photography, where narrative drifts into imagery. The structure of the piece reflects the characters’ self-absorption: they make gestures towards friendliness, but manage to avoid real interaction.
