On a nasty cold wintery September Sunday I trooped out to Ballarat to see the ‘Ballarat International Foto Biennale‘. I like driving out to Ballarat; my car likes the drive; I like the art gallery; I like the feel of the town and its magnificent architecture; I like the coffee at the place I like to go to; I don’t like the rain and cold and wind all together.
The festival included ‘core’ (exhibitors who were invited by the festival committee) and ‘fringe’ photographic exhibitions. However, as it finished on 4th October, the website unfortunately seems to have been cleared of some of the interesting content about the exhibitions. So I’ll do my best to remember what I saw.
Bruno Benini (1923-2003) and Gerhard Joren at Gallery Toot Toot (near railway): this was an interesting juxtaposition of two bodies of black and white photographs, one fairly classic (fashion and man-muscle shots) and the other reasonably gritty realist photos of sex workers around the world. It was a huge cavernous industrial space with some of the working machinery still about. A small interesting detail was that the Benini photographs had black frames and those by Goren had white frames.
photograph taken with permission
My exhibition-viewing friend and I then walked through the bitter weather to the Fine Art Gallery of Ballarat. Sadly no photographs were permitted of these exhibitions (though they do allow photographs of the permanent exhibition, without flash of course). Exhibiting here were Tim Griffith and Nathalie Doust; I’m not sure if there was a third, I can’t quite remember. The images in ‘Frozen in Time‘ by Nathalie Doust were fantastic. The palette is restricted to the almost nostalgic old holiday snap colours of greens and pinks with white and fading edges; the subject matter were mainly young women dressed in simple white dresses in a lush green mountainous landscape posed in positions that raised a smile in me, some laying in the grass, some resting on fences or beside a river, mostly with their dresses slightly awry and exposing their prim white underpants. Just delightful!
Next was the Mining Exchange, where there were many exhibitors: Konrad Winkler, Wayne Quillam, and lots of others from the fringe program. For me the star was the building; beautiful spaces and curves, gorgeous little rooms off the sides.
photograph taken with permission
Another photo…
photograph taken with permission
And another…
photograph taken with permission
There were many others we visited … the most impressive shows among these, in my view anyway, were Samantha Everton and photographs by the Pommerfritz Crew.
‘Ballarat International Foto Biennale‘ was in Ballarat from 4th September to 4th October 2009.
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