Photography infiltrates our daily lives as one of the most prominent forms of modern communication: from art, advertising, media and surveillance to smartphones, selfies and social media.This phenomenon was explored in 1977 by cultural analyst and critical essayist, Susan Sontag. She stated “our need to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs…is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted”. But how does photography equally confirm and enhance reality? Fashion photography embraces our imagination and sits as the looking glass through which we wander into daydreams, playing with ideas of human desire, pushing societal boundaries and experimenting with identity, medium and form. Curated by Michelle Mountain, Reverie Revelry looks at photography as a dream that represents a coinciding truth and fallacy, through the lens of fashion. Featuring work by Bruno Benini, Robyn Beeche, Noé Sendas, Prue Stent and Honey Long, Nancy de Holl and Matthew Linde/Centre for Style, this exhibition invites viewers to lose themselves in the revelry and the reverie, meeting in the place where art and unreality collide.
CURATOR: Michelle Mountain
Michelle Mountain is the Program Manager at the Centre for Contemporary Photography. She has a Masters of Art History specialising in South African Photography and a postgraduate degree in Museum Studies. Mountain also works as an independent curator.
ARTISTS:
Bruno Benini
Bruno Benini (1925-2001) is one of Australia’s most elegant and refined mid-20th century fashion photographers. He migrated to Melbourne in 1935 from Italy and was one of a group of influential émigré commercial photographers working in post-war Australia. Benini established a lasting creative partnership with New Zealand-born fashion stylist Hazel Benini (nee Craig) after they married in 1962. Together they generated an enormous number of publicity shots promoting local fashion houses and retailers on the fashion pages of all leading Australian newspapers.
Robyn Beeche
Robyn Beeche captured the spirit of London’s alternative culture of the 1970’s and 80’s, intersecting art photography with fashion photography at a time when performance art was at its peak. She documented the work of iconic figures such Vivienne Westwood, Mary Quant, Bill Gibb, Vidal Sassoon, Zandra Rhodes and Leigh Bowery. Beeche’s photography focuses on unique makeup and sophisticated lighting to create images that take on an illustrative quality.
Noé Sendas
Noé Sendas was born in Brussels and lives in Berlin, working in video, sculpture, collage, drawing and photography. Explicit and implicit references to art, literature, cinema and music are part of his raw materials. Sendas studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, London’s Royal College of Arts, Arco and Atelier Livre, Lisbon, and has had residencies in Berlin, Madrid, Paris and Venice. He has exhibited at leading institutions in the USA, Germany, France, Spain and Portugal.
Prue Stent
Prue Stent is a Melbourne-based artist and photographer. Her practice is multidisciplinary and collaborative, often co-mingling between photography, performance, installation and sculpture. Operating in a way that is spontaneous and playful, the result is often unexpected and accidental. Stent was most recently commissioned to produce a video for Gucci and completed a BuoyRR residency in New York. She has had photographs published in a number of magazines including Dazed and Confused, Vice and Pitch Zine.
Honey Long
Honey Long is a Sydney-based artist working within the mediums of photography, performance, installation and sculpture. Her work often utilises cultural objects and archetypes, reconfiguring them within fluid and dreamy contexts. Seeking to disturb reductive binaries, particularly the constructs of femininity and nature, she explores themes of desire, fear, fetishisation and procreation. The recurring sense of duality within her works seeks to highlight the dichotomy by which one might be both attracted to and repelled by objects and phenomena.
Nancy de Holl
Nancy de Holl lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and an MFA from the University of California in 2003. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and institutions around the world, and was recently included in Charlotte Cotton’s book Photography is Magic.
Matthew Linde/ Centre for Style
Centre for Style is a collective, exhibition space and store for contemporary fashion practice directed by Matthew Linde. Commenced in July 2013, the Centre has showcased the work of designers, artists and writers from across the world through performances, runways, exhibitions, publications and as a retail store. Centre for Style has recently curated shows at Mission Comics (San Francisco), Mathew (Berlin) and Utopian Slumps (Melbourne); exhibited in TarraWarra Biennial, 9th Berlin Biennale, National Gallery of Victoria, Spring 1883 and other critical events.
Please select an entry time
- June 11, 2017 - June 11, 2018
8:00 am - 5:00 pm