Sunday, May 08, 2005

unquiet landscapes

the other day I went to see an exhibition at the MCA (Museum of Modern Art). The "unquiet landscapes of Rosemary laing" were on show. In the exhibition, the artist questions the relation of our body or society to nature.
One of the series, is photographs taken in the Blue mountains rainforest, with carpets set on the ground. From a distance, it isn't obvious because the carpets blend into the landscape's colours and patterns. From closer, one can recognize the flowery patterns of the old-fashioned carpets which questions the idea of colonisation of Australia by the English and the idea of colonialising even the wildest place that shouldn't belong to anyone.
Another series was "the fallen bride" where one can see a bride falling through the sky. first, she is lightly fying through it, and then, she is shot and falling through it. The bride and her attire symbolise the old society model of purity but the big fluffy dress also expresses the heaviness of it and the distance from the actual body.
Those photographs are more surprising since they are not digitally composed adding a flying bride to a photo of a sky. Instead they are realised with stunts and a number of technics for them to be somewhat "real". This also introduces the whole debat on the "reality" of photography as a practice.
I enjoyed this exhibition because it showed a way of expressing something with the photographs, beyond a mere recording of events. This is what i find the hardest to achieve, and which probably draws the line between snap-happy shots and an artistic approach.

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