Flatlands Exhibition

Flatlands: Photography and Everyday Space Exhibition, 13 September 2012 to 3 February 2013 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Exhibition Background and Themes

The Flatlands exhibition aims to examine the role of photography in changing the way in which people ‘perceive, organise and imagine the everyday world, by looking at the changing ways photographers have depicted public and private environments.’  It features works from 23 international and Australian photographic artists sourced from the NSW Art Galley’s extensive collection of 20^th century and contemporary photographic archive.   It was made publicly accessible and available to people of all demographics as admission into the photography gallery offered free admission.

The collection of works contributed to the exploration of the perceptions of everyday space, delving into the possibilities of where the boundaries of what is real and what is imaginary become blurred.   In the 19^thcentury in the year of 1826, it was the Frenchman Nicephore Niepce who produced the world’s first permanent photograph on a pewter plate.  Here it seemed like the perfect apparatus to represent and classify phenomena everything.   In the early 20^th century photography was questioned, some considered it rigid and limited as is could only capture a solo point in time and space.   However, as photographic technology developed through the century this view changed, technique and the culture of photography.  For example faster exposure time has enhanced ability of a photograph to convey aspects of our everyday world that may have otherwise continued to be blind to the eye. 

Perception

The Flatland exhibition attempted to connect with the audience and offer a journey of exploration for the magic moments in daily life.  Unfortunately the exhibition lived up to its name, in that it was flat. It fell flat on its face.  This was definitely not what the curators had in mind but the exhibition was misguided and miscommunicated, the intentional aims definitely did not reach the audience at all.  This is laid mainly on the fact that the Flatland exhibition was a myth i.e. it was doomed from that start as the collection could not physically be found or accessed by the audience in any manner at all.  This is contrary to the extensive and effective advertisement of the exhibition through various mediums of media.  Regrettably there was no follow through with the gallery advertisements, what the audience was meant to see versus what they actually saw was completely off target.

As a result the adjoining contemporary art gallery becomes extremely enticing to the audience and will make up for the lack of works from the Flatland mirage.   The contemporary display has received an energising lift as a result of: the new gallery floor of the gallery being opened in 2011, a whole suit of new contributing artist of both national and international acclaim, lastly the John Kaldor Family Collection was a recent present to the gallery and has contributed to the galleries comprehensive collection in Australia of contemporary art ranging from the 1960s to the current.   See the accompanying images for a taste of what the vibrant contemporary art collection can offer.

References

Art Gallery of New South Wales (2012), What’s On, viewed 24 October 2012, http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/flatlands/.