Photographic abstractions

The exhibition had a strong use of Design running through the work. Making reference to the catalogue, identify three pieces of work that displayed a strong use of 'inventive' design.
Chantal Faust – Creates amazing pieces of art without even touching a camera. Layering different objects onto a flat bed scanner and scanning them, it’s really creative and really makes you think about her art, it’s hard to perceive at first.

Anne MacDonald – Her works at the gallery where photographs of velvet. One black, one red. The red you could see all sorts of textures and it looked a little like curtains, the black however was just a plain black square. It made you stop and think about what it really could be.

Scott Redford – His photographs at the gallery where not what they seem, originially I thought they were fountains, or a forest. But they are actually urinals. It shows these things which are considered dirty and gross in quite a different light.

How else did the exhibition develop the theme of creativity and challenged our concepts of photography?

This exhibition showcased artworks that look at light, pattern most artists had very creative ways of capturing images and used repetition or scaling to create the look or effect they were going for. It was really interesting to see how people can make something so popular, so different.

Why was the work by Scott Redford (Urinals), the large aerial lanscape by John Gollings and the work of Rick Wood discussed? What does the work have in common?

All of the work by these artists focused on scale. The urinals where really quite enlarged that you couldn’t make out what they were on the first look. The Large aerial landscape by Jogn Gollings was extremely zoomed out, which made it almost look like a painting because of all the different colours.

Have a look at the artist Chantal Faust on the web. Find out what you can about her work and write a short biography. Besides the two pieces in the gallery what other work has she done? Find two examples and write what you think of the work.

Chantal Faust was born in Melbourne in 1980. Working with mainly flat bed scanners she creates images that seem to be from a kaleidoscope. She has a doctorate in philosophy as well as masters in fine art and also two bachelors in the same subject. Faust has had 9 solo exhibitions ranging from 2003-2009 and included in many group exhibitions from 2000-2012.

She has won 12 awards and been published 27 times. Very rarely does her work actually depict something that the viewer can make out. One of these works is called “Hula-Hula Horse” it features a horse with abstract lines crossing it. This piece of work actually looks like a painting and is quite popular.

We looked at John Nixon work and his reference to Malevich (Suprematism) . Following Suprematism in 1915 the movement Constructivism dominated in Russia with the work of Rodchenko. Why is Rodchenko an important influence on Graphic Design?

Rodchenko was very ahead of the times. He used his photography to provoke emotion in those that viewed it. His graphic design work featured bold colour blocks and a lot of abstract lines. Because of this style is work is very iconic.