All words and images © Matthew Venables 2010. All Rights Reserved.
Airport Carpark
Sunday August 1: 2010.
So what was to be a week or two's break has elongated, become scored in terms of months...I guess for a bit it was just easier not to post. A period of so much work, head down earning the coin whilst it was there for the pluckn'...anyway... In the midst of a coupla frantic weekend long runs through the airports of several states, shooting pictures on company time...waiting here and there for light to change or rain to stop...lotsa dead air time in ports reading a fine fine tome of a novel. Navigating those cities on foot, following the map, lugging the gear, hopping numerous taxis...dropping so many dollars on transport you'd think it had no tomorrow, I'm soaking up as much transit time to make memories until I came upon a picture for myself.
Livia Venables
Born 30 May 2010 at 23h58, my niece Livia Venables, pictured here at about a month old. Hooray! So delighted as a first time uncle that she was born healthy and seems happy.
Darling Harbour, late afternoon
Hardly an art doc kinda shot, but there I was on duty for the 107 Projects crew to document a small decoration done for the FIFA World Cup fan site in Darling Harbour...course I made the straight shots, showing the work in situ, but it was when I saw the scene above through a crappy plastic wall of the `media tent' that I became a little excited. I must have been obsessed of late with the technical, with how sharp a particular lens at different aperture settings or spots within the frame. Which lens distorts where and how. Which lens gets what colour of nasty fringing in the highlights...I love the irony, or is it just a nice blast of refreshingly abstract air blowing with the breeze, the only shots for which I felt any real affinity were effectively shot through a cheap plastic lens. I gotta get me some broken and cheap plastic objectives for the newish camera!
Big Village Records
Atop the freezing crest of Sydney Park I waited for the lads till it was all but dark. Yeah, they're late, but hadda carry the couches up hill and down dale and it cannot have helped to have chosen at first the wrong hump. Fourteen of the blighters, seemingly nice blokes to a man but a touch of a rabble.
Big Village is a new independent Sydney hip hop label with the first releases from several of a number of acts due imminently. If you feel it, perhaps yer interested to know they've the label launch party this Saturday at the Sando in Newtown. This is just one of a decent number of individual and group portraits I made that eve, prolly my fave.
Michael Lewarne sets up for Underbelly Festival
Though I didn`t have all the time I might have liked for this one, I spent a couple of hours across a few days making some snaps at Underbelly (Lab and Public Arts) Festival, largely the works by artists under the auspices of Reef Knot. The idea is that folks from many disciplines come together in the space and make some work in the week before the `open' presentation. During this week there are guided tours of the workshop so folks can watch practitioners creating and at the weeks' conclusion the doors are thrown wide for anyone who wants to come check it. Nice.
Colony Collapse: Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe
I just met these folks on the afternoon of the job...the sister and partner of a colleague n buddy. The were showing at First Draft Gallery on Chalmers Street opposite Central Station...in my book First Draft ain`t exactly a high point of artistic endeavour, but then I haven`t been back in since the refurb and tended, if the truth be told, not to go too often. Anyway, really liked the pieces (you can really only see the centrepiece in the shot above) that Karl and Tess made. They have another work that shall be on display outside the MCA for three months starting soon, and/or you can find more information about their operation
here.
To the big news. Have just started, and shall continue for the next few weeks, following Pat Sheil on the Election 2010 trail as his appointed Campaign Photographer (3rd assistant) during his run for office in Wentworth. Figure I shall post some of the candid and contrived media moments, hope to capture the High Water Mark or The Fade, who knows how this show'll run.
The Candidate | #1 - A Family Man
Pat Sheil, candidate for the Federal Parliament seat of Wentworth, shares a casual moment from an afternoon outing in the park . When questioned about the thorny issue of the new eugenics and its' relationship with the Wentworth constituency, Clarrie, just a year old, interjected "Sheil be right!".
The Candidate | #2 - A Farming Man
The Candidate for Federal Parliament seat of Wentworth with prize winning fennel grower Eugene Krossknoka
at his farm. Krossknocka, an immigrant who arrived by boat to Sydney Harbour and then settled with his family in the area thirty years ago, when asked what he thought of the current crossroads or impasse facing the electorate, erupted simply, "Sheil be right!".
