All Eyes Heaven-ward
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday March 22, 2000
When David Stephenson last showed at the Australian Centre for Photography in 1998, the American-born photographer filled the eastern wall with Sublime Space, images tracing the intersecting paths of stars.
The effect was mesmerising, drawing the viewer into orbit-inspired spirals and, in one memorable image, what appeared to be a vast eye floating amid a forest of stars. The picture was both chilling and scintillating, and suggested this artist had attempted to address nothing less than the nature of time, as calibrated by the movements of Earth's heavenly companions.
Stephenson has returned to the ACP, accompanied by fellow artists Rebecca Cummins and Stephen Roach, with an exhibition that, at first glance, appears far more prosaic large colour prints of the interiors of church domes, cupolas, photographed in Europe over the past seven years.
The effect, however, is every bit as engaging as Stephenson's previous exhibition. This photo-grapher takes the central point of the church's cupola, its oculus, as the still point of our turning world, and what Victoria Hammond's catalogue essay describes as ``the window on to the Cosmos ... the eye of God".
In a generous display, Stephenson fills the four concrete walls of the main ACP gallery with three tiers of richly coloured images that one perceptive visitor spontaneously described to me as ``equal parts of mandala and Kaleidoscope".
That they are finely detailed images of the decorated interiors of church cupolas is obvious. Why they are so engaging is less clear. Stephenson uses a simple enough approach. ``I place my Hasselblad on a small bean bag, immediately below the centre of the dome. (Church authorities do not like tripods.) Using colour negative film, which has plenty of latitude, I always manage to get a satisfactory exposure. I photograph only the dome."
In his approach, Stephenson occupies similar aesthetic territory to that of Judith Ahern and her very different subject matter at Byron Mapp, further down Oxford Street. Both Ahern and Stephenson let their colourful subjects speak for themselves, without significant compositional intervention.
Stephenson's Cupolas convey aerial, inverse views of the paradise that may be attained through belief. One can only speculate on the effect images of Christ, His disciples and their beliefs had upon the devoted in medieval times. With prolonged viewing, Stephenson's hemispherical subject matter becomes quite hypnotic from the sensuality of Christian storytelling made visible to other cupolas in which illustration is conspicuously absent. One austere dome's geometric, layered terraces of plaster had the natural elegance of a sliced artichoke heart.
Stephenson's modest, finely designed and printed catalogue of these works precedes a much larger book planned for later.
On discovering a line of identical objects neatly arranged in an art gallery, the viewer's heart may rise or sink, according to the degree of affection held for installation art.
Rebecca Cummins's Liquid Scrutiny presents a line of silver chalices arrayed upon black fabric, and is the latest example of the playful intelligence of this artist (Cummins once converted a series of portable toilets into functioning camera-obscuras, which were then strategically positioned throughout Centennial Park).
Each chalice, of the kind seen in Hollywood medieval romances, has a secret. A glance into the base of each reveals a bulging, glistening convex lens, which, combined with a tiny optic set into the chalice's stem, conveys a wide angle view of life outside. From the western end of her display, for example, Cummins's line of vessels and a great many of David Stephenson's images can clearly be seen.
This simple, intriguing work by Cummins reminds us how lenses, in whatever form pinhole, camera obscura or chalice/camera intervene between our naked vision and the world outside.
Stephen Roach's Baroccocontinuo explores this photographer's belief in the ongoing influence of the baroque, a creative force Roach says epitomises ``the bizarre, excessive, anti-classical ... and theatrical."
Roach's main works are mostly triptychs in which each contributing image presents incongruent and supportive moments. In Maggio 1999, a blossoming white rose occupies centre stage with a sunlit, formal garden to its left and the decaying interior of a baroque painter's house at right. Inside this dwelling, beyond time-worn doors, a candelabra can be seen glowing in the deep background. Despite the somewhat obvious butting of one image with another (Adobe Photoshop would have rendered this seamless but, I suspect, soulless), Roach presents a composite image suggesting beauty, the passing of time and the inevitable arrival of decay. No small achievement.
The successful balancing of the themes expressed by these three artists makes this exhibition one of the ACP's most satisfying in recent times.
This exhibition continues at the ACP until April 15.
© 2000 Sydney Morning Herald