Sightseeing

Research

2011-07-12T00:20:00.000-07:00

This is an image by Tobias Hegele that I found via the Consientious blog during some of the very earliest research I undertook for Sightseeing. While he is German, Hegel resides in South Africa. Unfortunately the link to Hegele's own website is broken.

This image wasn't used in Sightseeing, but it has been an enduring touch point during research. I am attracted to the contradictions in it: the brightly coloured roses, their delicacy - their thorniness, the cultivated nature of the garden - and the fact that it's shielded by such an abrasive fence. The fence implies a certain no-nonsense approach to security, not just keeping the wilderness at bay.

It was the perfect visual metaphor to symbolise the complexities around what sort of landscapes you might choose to make postcards of. The lighting is right, but the subject matter is, well, it's not typical tourist material.

Later on, a theme developed within the Sightseeing project, about our relationship to borders, centred around the work of Doris Frohnapfel and Eva Leitolf. So this image returned to me. Incidentally Conscientious writer, Joerg Colberg, also writes about Leitolf's work.

The work says a lot about contested land, an idea explored in Mark Adams' works. Emma Bugden created a two part exhibition entitled Land Wars (2008) around similar ideas. Part one is here and Part Two occured in the same year. Wayne Barrar was included in that project, and there is a catalogue that accompanies the show.

Parting Shot

2011-06-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

In case you hadn't noticed already there is a story in the May issue of Prodesign on Sightseeing. It features the interview via postcard that has been taking place between Duncan Munro and Jonty Valentine as well as a bit of a Q and A with me.

Sunset

2011-05-26T20:02:00.000-07:00

It's the last day at McNamara Gallery photography if you still want to see the exhibition.

Dusky Maidens

2011-05-25T02:18:00.000-07:00

The exhibition Maiden Aotearoa at City Gallery uses postcards and the stereotype of the "Dusky Maiden" as the starting point for a conversation about contemporary representations of Maori women. I am visiting Wellington shortly so will have a chance to see the exhibition. It's the second exhibition in as many years that has used postcards as a point of investigation into issues of Maori identity. Coincidence? No. It is interesting because the historical postcard craze in New Zealand corresponds with a moment of intense colonisation and the objectification of Maori culture through photography. Here's an earlier post about a 2009 exhibition at Paul McNamara's Gallery by Murray Lloyd, Maoriland which also used postcards as a starting point. I couldn't help but notice that the Whanganui River, is described as the "Rhine of Maoriland." How very weirdly apt is that, Germany and New Zealand meet again.

Travelling Light

2011-05-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

I am back from the installation of Sightseeing in Whanganui. The exhibition opened on Friday 06 May at McNamara Gallery Photography, the only dedicated photography space in the country. McNamara is nominally a dealer space, so I pay due credit to Paul McNamara for going out on a limb and hosting a show that may not generate much of a commercial return for the Gallery. Moreover, because the works in the exhibition are mass produced it unseats the role played by vintage prints in the discussion around photography's value in a commercial art market. I like to think that Paul McNamara, the gallery director, is interested in what the exhibition says about photographic practice. Sightseeing talks about what we mean by photography on three levels.

First, it highlights what we mean by a photograph - is is the act of 'taking' the shot (that decisive moment..), does a photograph reside in the negative, or perhaps in the printing of the image, or even in a reproduction of the image?

Second, it highlights how we multiply, reproduce, send and diseminate images in the world.

Third, it highlights how we receive and use images, how we and also artists attach stories to images, and it belies the research process that artists often use.

Exhibitions that allow discussions 'about' photography are few and far between, (we all remember Imposing Narratives) so it it a credit to the Gallery that they create the space for this discussion to occur.

FAQs

2011-05-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

What was the genesis of the project?

There was a group of artists at Massey who were exploring landscape or site through photography and they commissioned me to do some research in this area. It very quickly occurred to me that postcards were an apt vehicle to investigate the relationship between photograph and landscape.

The first picture postcards were made in Germany, so that was a natural conversation that emerged from my early research. This relationship with Germany was reinforced by the traffic of ideas created by the ‘Dusseldorf school’ of photography and a certain typological theme that I went about exploring with this exhibition.

The medium is implicitly mobile, which talks to this very contemporary idea about the mobility of the image in digital culture. New technology tools like blogs and email have really replaced the function of postcards so it seemed like good timing to look at the medium again to see what it might offer. Postcards were really the first mass produced photographs, well postcards and pornography, but I wasn’t asked to look into porn.

How did you chose those to be involved?

I have a special interest in the cross over between art and design culture, which started with the video games exhibition I made back in 2003 Arcadia. Part of the way I work is to involve a designer right from the very beginning of a project, as for me, design is a raw ingredient not just a branding or positioning exercise – it’s a mode of thinking. For Sightseeing, we did an initial tender proposal for the design work to three designers working at the intersection of art and design.

For me, design principles often provide a conceptual framework for an exhibition. A great example of what I mean is navigation – which is a key design question for exhibition and publication formats. Navigation can be linear or a more browsing style, and with Sightseeing, it quickly became obvious that a traditional linear publication wasn’t relevant to the project. Then, during our research, we found great historical examples that reinforced our thinking about the concertina style format.

Did you visualise it as a printed object from the outset (and did that change at all as time went on?)

It was conceived as a printed, mass produced project from the outset. I felt this was the best way to draw out the postcard’s role in the objectification of landscape, their complicit role in shaping destinations and itineraries for touristic consumption. Of course these images are not typical tourist postcard shots, they are landscapes that are often ‘hidden’ or ‘unseen’. For instance, these artists are photographing underground spaces, or parking lots, waiting areas, fake or simulated landscapes. It wouldn’t have been the same exhibition if we had used exhibition prints, the postcards are very much part of the look at feel of the project. You can turn them over and read them. You can post them, it was always very important that they function in that way.

Also, it wouldn’t have been able to travel the way that it has if they had been framed photographs; it has been shipped to the UK, Wellington, Auckland and Wanganui. It was always conceived as an exhibition that could travel, that’s what postcards are all about, mobility. Photography packages landscape for consumption, and postcards disseminate those sites for mass consumption, for tourism.

Has the project changed its format over time?

One thing that surprised me during the course of making the exhibition was considering how the value of postcards has shifted so dramatically. Initially they were collected in albums and highly prized as trading cards. Eventually that gave way to a rather more prosaic existence as a marketing device with an expectation that they should be a free giveaway.

Well, there was a lot of discussion about whether the back of the postcards, the written side, should be artist or designer’s ‘real estate’. In the end, rather than let this become a contest for space, we recognized the need to have flexibility in our approach to the format, ‘one size fits all’ was never going to accommodate 90 images and 15 artists. The exhibition allows those differences to be played out in a quite physical way, in comparison to the frame by frame experience of reading the publication. Certainly you get the effect of mass production right away in the exhibition space, because of the repetition of the images.

Duncan > Jonty #3

2011-05-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

Jonty > Duncan #3

2011-05-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

Showtime!

2011-05-01T03:17:00.000-07:00

A review of the exhibition has cropped up on John Hurrell's website and also on Lumiere Reader. I am curious that neither of these reviews picks up on the postcard as a photographic multiple. Ever since the project Arcadia I have been very interested in multiples. (I have been carrying around an exhibition proposal for a Multiples show for as long as I can remember). For that exhibition I asked a number of the artists in the exhibition to make 'official merchandise' for the Gallery's shop, in homage to the way that merchandise was part and parcel of cinema and gaming culture.

Quite simply Multiples are editioned artworks, sometimes unique, sometimes not (I think often of someone like Felix Gonzales Torres's lollies in this context). I remember a small photographic multiple on the desk of Greg Burke when he was director of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery by Gavin Hipkins. The work comprised two standard sized colour photos, probably machine printed, sandwiched back to back in a perspex menu holder. It was a very economical idea and it has stayed with me all this time.

It made sense to me to think about the postcard as a medium of its own, not as a lament for larger exhihibition prints, or a poor mans' photograph rendered in CMYK, but as a device and as a format with its own formal qualitities. A number of the works in Sightseeing don't exist in any other format.

Why postcards? This question has followed me around for three years. In no particular order, I have started a list:

They are a very economical format.
They travel well.
They conflate seeing and reading together.
They enable us to embed the artist's research alongside the image.
They talk about the history of photography (the first mass-produced photographs were postcards).
They talk about the links between landscape photography and tourism; the way that photography generates a desire to consume landscapes and sites, structures itineraries and fuels more travel.
They disrupt the idea of what a photograph can be (where does the photograph reside, in the film, in the taking of the shot, as a dark room print, as a reproduction especially when some of these works don't exist in any other format.
They talk about the way that photography is distributed in the world, AND how we receive it.

And because all of these things made it an interesting thing to do.

IMAGE: A mock up of the installation, made during the research and provocation phase of the project.

The price of a postcard

2011-04-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

As part of the research for Sightseeing, I delved into two publications written by Bill (William) Main. The first, "Send Me a Postcard: New Zealand postcards and the story they tell" was published by Craig Potton 2007 and "Wish You Were Here"co written with Alan Jackson and published by the NZ Postcard Society Inc 2005. Both books are extensively illustrated with historical examples.

One of the things that struck me once you begin to research the history of the picture postcard is the shift in value that has occured over 140 odd years. They began as highly prized collectables in every fashionable home, a calling card. Many of the early mass produced cards were printed in Germany. Then, the sending of postcards became a craze, interrupted by world wars, when trade with Germany was difficult and sending mail was restricted to essential correspondence. As the mechanics and technology of printing evolved postcards became cheaper and easier to produce. At some point, postcards were adopted as publicity vehicle by PR and marketing departments, and at the same their value shifted.

The impact of technology is another factor that has shifted the perceived value of postcards. Blogging, email and pxt have all but eclipsed the travel-news function of postcards. Instead the sending of postcards has become a personal gesture invested with a sense of the physical labour involved. Purchasing cards, writing messages, acquiring stamps, franking and posting plus the card's accumulated airmiles; these actions are all part of the implied value of a postcard.

So it was a carefully weighted decision to have the Sightseeing postcards available for people to take away. What value could be assigned to these cards? Should they be purchased or available without charge? What does that say about the value of the images, and their value as orginal artworks?

What about the costs and labour involved in designing, copyediting proofing and printing these cards, how is that accounted for?

The Sightseeing cards are available free of charge. Not as a whopping great sales rack of cards, or a pallet of mass-produced giveaways, but on a browsing bench, where there is a few of each card on show. Enough so that you can souvenir one without being noticed, but not so many that you don't value the image and the object itself. Free for the taking.

IMAGE TOP: Covers of Bill Main books from my library.
IMAGES MIDDLE: Shots on the press of the postcards and publication in production.
IMAGE BOTTOM: The shelf at work.

Duncan > Jonty #2

2011-04-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

Jonty > Duncan #2

2011-04-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

Duncan > Jonty #1

2011-04-18T02:39:00.000-07:00

Jonty > Duncan #1

2011-04-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

A fly on the wall

2011-04-11T04:57:00.000-07:00

Here are few shots from the St Paul Street opening. A luck would have it, Nick Austin strayed into the frame of one of these shots, the artist who's postcards I had seen earlier that day and posted about last week.

Anne Noble also attended the opening from Wellington and will be giving a lunchtime talk in the Sightseeing space on 12th April at 12:30pm.

You can get a good sense of how the exhibition is layed out in the space through these shots. I very much like the fact that you can sit down and 'read' in this space, as the exhibition is quite intensive with 90 images overall. I like that fact that this exhibition encourages slowing down, reading, and also taking in an image more than once. The battery effect of mass-produced images repeated is actually conducive to looking at them in detail. I should know, I spent quite a bit of time contemplating each one and their endless permutations as we installed them.

By the numbers:

that's all 540 of them;
and all 2,160 peices of blue tack.

Postcards arriving for the Sightseeing posting wall at ST PAUL St

2011-04-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

This modified Elger Esser card arrived at ST PAUL St today. It's now up on the posting wall with the others we have.

Many thanks to the sender! We'd love to have more, send them in and we'll hang them up.

On the outside

2011-04-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

Fiona Amundsen has been intensively creating new work, and her latest exhibition The First City in History is currently on now at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. The latest body of work was created in Hiroshima, the first city in the world to be subjected to nuclear warfare. Her series investigates with photographs how public spaces reflect the changing political, social and historical values that are attributed to them. You can see the series here, as well as her first series Miracle on the Han River shot in Seoul. These two series are part of a planned trilogy.

Amundsen works included in Sightseeing are from her Wynyard Point series which were photographed here in Auckland. Like Garden Place they occured right at the beginning of this investigation into civic identity and public spaces, and how they might express or even repress social, cultural or historical values. Her seductive images aestheticise these complicated and often contested civic spaces with an air of detachment and candour.

Fiona Amundsen will be giving a talk about her work in the St Paul St Gallery space on 19 April, and her new work, The First City in History, will be coming to Auckland later this year.

Doing it for themselves

2011-04-09T13:50:00.000-07:00

If you have ever thought of making your own postcards, you can always have a go here.

Send me a postcard

2011-04-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

Here are two little works by Auckland artist Nick Austin. I discovered them on Thursday in my visit to Hopkinson Cundy one of the newer dealer galleries in town. They're quite charming, the little ball and the postage-stamp sized window, it's an accident waiting to happen. With a comic strip sense of timing I am left wondering if they make it through the goal posts. Austin works a lot painting on found materials, but here he is using ready made postcards by well-known art paper manufacturers Lana. The papers are created so that you can paint your own postcards, but Austin has gone and painted on the 'reverse' side, the writing side, inverting the whole idea. Will anyone have the balls to mail these works?

Opening Tonight

2011-04-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

Some more shots from the installation phase of Sightseeing at St Paul Street Gallery. I liked the tone on tone effect of the Yellow Tack.

Little by Little

2011-04-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

Today we started installation at St Paul Street Gallery, at AUT University. We started by laying out all the postcards on the floor of the gallery and mapping out how the space will work. In this shot Guy is installing postcards by Eva Leitolf on the western wall of the gallery in the early morning sun. You can read more about her Postcards from Europe series on the news page of her website.

It's quite slow work, this wall will get hung today and that leaves tomorrow for the three other walls. The signage will go up Thursday, fix the lighting, and we open on Thursday night 5:30pm.

Thanks Francis

2011-03-22T00:52:00.000-07:00

Am reading up on the history of New Zealand art according to Francis Pound right now. He pulls out a quote from Anne McCahon describing her experience of seeing Pierre-Auguste Renoir's The Luncheon of the Boating Party in the USA.

"We walked in and stood breath taken in surprise. There is was, no picture post card, at the end of a long room with piano and row of chairs."

The McCahon's were comparing the work to a postcard experience of modern art, an experience conditioned by seeing works via reproduction. Francis Pound goes on to suggest, "in truth, it is the the reproduction which provokes the very journey that comes to correct it... that envy-arousing, travel provoking trophy addressed to those who remain at home."

Pound identifies that postcards have an ability to generate and shape itineraries, to fuel a desire for travel, which is one of the core messages behind Sightseeing. That impulse underscores why it is important that the artists who make the postcards in Sightseeing choose sites that are not typically conceived as travel destinations.

The quotes are from pages 238 and 239 respectively, of The Invention of New Zealand

Postcards from home

2011-03-20T02:26:00.000-07:00

Sightseeing wouldn't be complete without an exhibition in Auckland, my home town. St Paul Street Gallery is hosting the exhibition for an intensive blitz, from

08 - 29 April 2011

The Gallery is also very interested to explore the design aspect of the exhibition (they are an Art + Design School after all). Sightseeing will sit along side the exhibition FAX from the ICI, so there's a very nice fit with the two projects. There will be some great public programmes on that score in conjunction with their Print Season project. They are staging a Print Symposium on 15-16 April, and both Sightseeing and Fax will be part of the discussions.

We will keep you posted.

2011-03-17T02:07:00.000-07:00

Today we started an interview by postcard. The contributors are Duncan Munro, Jonty Valentine, with me hovering about in the background. This was the first postcard, one that I collected when I was at Tate St Ives, of a work by Eva Hesse. The work was totally charming and disarming in a room for of big boy abstraction. I sent it to Duncan in Germany where he is based for the next few months on a residency programme. There are two questions on the back, so will post again once we get the reply.

Jonty works at AUT university as a Lecturer in Graphic Design. AUT University are the next hosts of the Sightseeing exhibition at St Paul Street Gallery.

Baby Brain

2011-01-16T12:02:00.000-08:00

There is a new book due out with Dewi Lewis Publishing in May 2011 which features a set of postcards from the collection of the British art dealer James Birch. This set of Baby Postcards is really quite something. Rick Poynor leads a great discussion on the way that surrealists adopted the creative possibilities inherent in the postcard format.

Dewi Lewis makes a bit of a speciality in publishing books on and around postcards, they are also the publishers for Martin Parr for instance, and, they have a real strength in photography. Closer to home they are publishers of Ann Shelton's book Redeye and Harvey Benge's Lucky Box. and Not Here, Not There.

Thanks M.

They're listening

2011-01-07T00:28:00.000-08:00

A review popped up in our weekly The Listener. The magazine has a strong reputation for reviews and while this take doesn't take a position on the exhibition itself, it does have the uncommon virtue of describing and articulating the works in the exhibition, which makes it a very satisfying read. The full text appears online from the 8th Jan, but the hard copy came out on just before Christmas, so good holiday fodder.

Image: Wayne Barrar

Making News

2010-12-15T16:41:00.000-08:00

"Finally, as of the 1890s, it was possible to take photographs with the new flexible roll film. As one example of the results of the technical advances, the sale of postcards on subjects taken from the mining environment in England became particularly widespread. Between 1880 and 1913, the six leading postcard distributors documented all major mining disasters, thus satisfying the general public's craving for sensation and its desire for information in equal measure" (Lange 2007: 23).

This quote comes from a discussion titled 'Early Documentation Projects and Industrial Photographs' in Lange, Susanne (2007) Bernd and Hilla Becher: Life and Work, MIT Press, Massachusetts, pg 23. With thanks to Fiona Amundsen.

The quote acknowledges the early news-function served by postcards, and is also outlined in a previous post on American Real Photo Postcards. It is particularly resonant locally right now becuase of the Pike River mining explosion and its shattering after effects for the Greymouth community, on the west coast of the South Island.

Remote Control

2010-12-13T02:41:00.000-08:00

The exhibition is onto the second incarnation, and opened while I was in Beijing. It is a very strange experience being absent when your exhibition is installing and opening. Thank you to the team at the Dowse who paid attention to all the small details that made it all happen, and also to the artists based in Wellington who lent a guiding hand to the installation, in particular Anne Noble and Wayne Barrar who expertly fielded a barrage of emails and even a long distance phone call. In the flurry of emails around the opening, I am grateful to Wayne for sending me images from the opening at The Dowse Art Museum, while I was away. In a strange twist of time logic, it meant that I saw images of the exhibition opening before it was even open from across the international date line. It does make me wonder all over again how artists must feel when their work is being installed remotely, under instructions, but nonetheless without being present in the room or in some cases without ever having a clear idea of the exhibition space.

Natee

2010-12-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

This series of 50 paintings by Thai artist Natee Utarit caught my attention installed at the Singapore Art Museum. Representing over four year’s work, the paintings pay homage to the celebrated monk and court painter Khrua In Kong, a mural painter during the reign of Rama IV. According to the wall label In Kong mimicked styles from European and American postcards sent to the palace, at a time when postcards were highly popular as an international trend.

Naturally, I found this history fascinating. Natee’s approach was to paint 50 scenes from postcards he procured on Ebay, without having been to the pictured destinations. You can see the work installed in 2005 at Chiang Mai University Art Museum here.

At several points in Natee’s survey exhibition I was struck by the relationship that photography played in the painting process. Here’s a great quote from him on this,

“One day panting wasn’t just about the physical act of painting. It became a way of understanding perception in a scientific way. It’s not just an art but a science – a way of knowing the world.”

This kind of epistemological claim for painting seems to me very much informed by a photographic understanding of the world. Another of his works 1/15 Second of Reality (18.35 – 18.40) 2001 makes this relationship to photography explicit. He paints two snapshots of the sky, five minutes apart, both taken at 1/15th second shutter speed.

Throughout his series Appearance and Reality he uses photography as information and as conceptual tool, for example the skewed horizon line in his paintings reveals that some images began life as photographs. The survey exhibition looked at copying as a legitimate means of representation, and it seems that the postcard works played into this discussion.

The Ballard hovers between two virtual worlds, between information and imagination. In an information technology era, The Ballard’s painted postcards raise the question of a privileged access to information, both at the time of In Kong in his role as the court painter, and at the current moment within an information-era where a surplus of images challenges what we mean by an authentic visual experience.

Image: The Ballard for Khrua In kong (greyscale) 2005
Oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm each, installation shot taken at Singapore Art Museum.

Reading Matters

2010-11-29T02:49:00.000-08:00

Snapped both these titles while browsing in the Serpentine Gallery Bookstore sale room (the gallery itself was in changeover). The top image is of course Martin Parr, who's inquiry into the postcard format is highly productive and unrelenting. The second is an index of thousands of images. I look on both of these projects slightly differently after viewing the Gwangju Biennial 10,000 Lives while I was recently in South Korea. The exhibition was at least partly about the role that photography plays in our lives, particularly now, in a moment of utter visual overload. For me the revelation of this exhibition was that it came at a point that I was just beginning to feel like I needed a change from photography. The exhibition was so compelling that it made me very excited again about what photography is, what makes up a photographic image, what it means, what materials are used, how it can be used and how photographic images occupy public space. With a series of wonderful juxtapositions, and some wonderful wall labels (I never thought I would hear myself saying that) this mammoth exhibition steathily and steadily won me over. I have not seen such a gratifying and rewarding exhibition in a long time. My faith is restored.

Paper Police

2010-11-10T19:34:00.000-08:00

More great mail from the Police.

The Lure

2010-10-14T19:56:00.000-07:00

Fresh from a conversation with Fiona Amundsen, one of the artists in Sightseeing, I have been thinking about modes of respresentation. Fiona talked about the lure of that paradigm where photography has a relationship to lived experience. That paradigm of photography is a powerful received metaphor. It seems to me that Sightseeing is playing on that paradigm. It uses postcards to explore our assumptions about lived experience, by adding filters.

Lived experience is filtered by the act of taking photographs, and again, by becoming a postcard of that experience. The Sightseeing postcards try to make visible our often implicit assumption that by buying, sending or receiving a postcard of a photograph of a place, that we have some correspondence with the experience of being in that place.

I like to think that this exhibition singles out a layered and complex nature of a photograph: what goes into the production of the images, to be sure; but also how that image comes to be manifest and distributed in the world; and thirdly how that image is received and interpreted by as viewers.

Image: Fiona Amundsen, Shinning Roves

Tragic Tourism

2010-10-12T01:07:00.000-07:00

More images in the vein of Lucy Lippard's "Tragic Tourism" in On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place. We found this postcard in Bovey Tracey on our recent visit to Plymouth, of the prison at Dartmoor, and we couldn't resist. The day before we had taken a walk on Dartmoor and had the tower from this prison pointed out to us. It was so perfectly fitting to have find a postcard of a prison, that I posted five copies of it and I only wish that I had brought more.

Elsewhere

2010-10-06T04:21:00.000-07:00

There are at least three different hanging formats used in the installation at Peninsula Arts. It is a generous exhibition venue and Director Sarah Chapman did a wonderful job configuring the exhibition for their space. What I like about the installation at Plymouth was the way it uses a variety of hanging formats to create a series of different experiences. We saw big hits, from outside the gallery seen through the windows; but we also saw more intimate experiences with people reading the wall texts, and staring medatitively, almost hypotically at the images which were pinned up en-masse on the walls.

Chapman has a degree in sequential design, which makes a whole lot of sense when you see her installation of the exhibition, and the way that it emphasises repetition in an almost Warholian way (I am thinking here of the Death and Disaster series in particular). The repetition of images was symptomatic of the way in which I deployed the photographic postcard as a multiple, and in part as a repost to the pop culture's expanding lexicon of photographic images via online social media networks.

All of the artists in this project are working in series, and the repetition of images actually enhances the effect of this serial approach to making images. For instance the tunneling perspective used by Wayne Barrar is reinforced by repeating the images over and over again in a tight block, so is the uniform format adopted by Frank Breuer, Ann Shelton or John Di Stefano.

It reinforced for me that Sightseeing is not just about the production of work and the production of discrete meaning within each series of work (the artist as detective / researcher / archivist / chronicler). Nor is is just about the disemination of that material through the world (using the mass-produced postcard format to send the images far and wide). The installation at Peninsula Arts underscored that the project is equally about the way that images are received and consumed in contemporary culture, via blogs, facebook, publications, fine art, newspapers - the whole gamut of photographic production and reception. It draws attention to how photography is read, posted, adopted and co-opted.

The exhibition format gives Sightseeing a rich interpretive level which until now I have only been able to imagine. As an exhibition there were many questions asked of this project, regarding the use of postcards, and the various mechanisms for their display in a gallery context and I am delighted to report that it answers those questions with dexterity, with complexity and aplomb.

My curatorial position over the last decade has persisted with a seam that investigates not only what we see, but how we see it. Ostensibly Sightseeing is about approaches to landscape seen through a photographic 'lens', but it is equally about what we might mean by using the very word photography. It questions where the image resides: in the 'decisive act' of making, in the distribution and dissemination of the image or in the reception. Sightseeing underscores that each of these channels is important in the production of meaning and to our interpretation.

Thanks the staff at University of Plymouth for their generosity in facilitating the exhibition and my visit, and to their ambitions for this project.

You're Simply the Best

2010-10-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Back from the exhibition opening in the UK and it turns out that the graphic design for the Sightseeing publication won a Silver Award at the 2010 Best Awards announced on 01 October in the editorial and books category, after being nominated as a finalist last month.

Sterling effort Duncan Munro, designer and art director, for the brilliant and well-conceived design that was a hallmark of the publication. Duncan worked very intensively on the project and was involved as a collaborator very early on, contributing ideas for the presentation and identity for the exhibition as well as the publication; he created the layout and the identity, researched and tested the concept extensively and ultimately masterminded the production of the book and postcards. These images were taken at the book launch in March this year (that's me holding the book, and Ann Shelton in the background).

Wastelands 2010, another project by Sightseeing designer Duncan Munro won a Gold, so the awards night in Auckland was a double whammy for him. Great work.

By the light of day

2010-09-26T03:14:00.000-07:00

Daylight savings starts this weekend in New Zealand.

And Anne Noble has an exhibition opening in Whanganui in November called "by light". It's been a fundamental preoccupation in Noble's work, and the exhibition features selected photographs from 1982 to the present. The dates for the exhibition are 05 - 26 November 2010 at McNamara Gallery Photography.

McNamara has been a big supporter of the Sightseeing project since its earliest days, and he will be hosting the exhibition in July 2011. You can read more about his programme here.

Some feedback

2010-09-21T21:29:00.000-07:00

“Earlier this week, I received a mysterious brown cardboard box that was badly beaten up. Like a well-worn traveler, it had seen hard times. I was delighted by what was inside – an elegant set of compellingly sly photographs masquerading as postcards.

The box set will be placed on a shelf next [to] my own box of miscellaneous artist’ postcards. Your postcards, and those of your deltiological co-conspirators, will keep company with a couple of dozen cards by Beuys (several signed), three by Carl Andre on “Land”, four by Jenny Holzer on plywood, one by Marcel Idea (with feather), and two Ray Johnson collage cards embellished with his bizarre ink stamps, among others."

- John O’Brian, Professor of Art History and Faculty Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Colombia

Welcome Home

2010-09-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

The caption on the back of this card translates the banner for non Danish readers. It reads, "Welcome home to a xenophobic country." The photograph was taken at Kastrup, Copenhagen International Airport 2009 by Masar Sohail but the postcard is the work of Joen P Vedel and Thomas Bo Ostergaard. There is a kind of fearlessness in making work like this.

The work arrived courtesy of the exhibition "Denmark 2010 - Instructions to the Nation of the Happiest People in the World" at Overgarden in Copenhagen.26 June -15 August 2010 where all is not what it might seem. Overgarden Institute of Contemporary Art has developed a strong programme in recent times particularly in regards to calling the bluff on Danish colonial history. I was very keen to secure a visit from Katarina Stenbeck, who was co-curator of this exhibition, to New Zealand in May. The Danish colonial story would be a fascinating, challenging and provocative backdrop to the local debates about colonial identity here. But that idea will have to wait.

For me, I like the way that this work sits on the edge of irony and doesn't blink. And of course, I like the way it uses postcards against themselves. I have just posted it off now.

Retrieval Options

2010-09-19T02:39:00.000-07:00

Just purchased this title for the mother in law, Postcards from Tukums: A Family Detective Story 2010. It's written by octogenarian Ann Gluckman and I will be fascinated to have a look at it when it arrives. The publication grew from a box of postcards and correspondence found in her family home and was used to trace back the family history. Written in a mix of German, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish, Gluckman apparently had to turn to a several experts to translate them. But enough about translation already.... Images of the postcards are reproduced in the book in colour with stamps and postmarks visible.

Gluckman has been an inspiration for many older scholars in this country; she returned to university to complete her degree with four children at the age of 32. She was the first female principal of a state run co-educational school in 1975, and is also known for her book Aging is Attitude: the New Zealand experience 1995. Postcards is her sixth book.

All the best

2010-09-12T13:34:00.000-07:00

Delighted to hear that the Sightseeing publication has been selected as a finalist in the Best Awards 2010. The book was nominated in the graphic design (editorial and books) category. Designer Duncan Munro deserves the credit for this, and we notice that there is some stiff competition, not only from other publishers, from from Duncan himself. His project Wastelands with Ann Shelton has also been nominated in the same category. Congratulations Duncan and Ann. The awards get announced on the first of October, so we will keep you posted on results for that.

If you haven't already got copies of the publication you should order now, as the limited print run is bound to sell out. You can order copies from Parsons Book Shop +64 9 303 1557, books@parsons.co.nz or directly from Helena Hunt at Massey University H.M.Hunt@massey.ac.nz

Plymouth Pier

2010-09-05T04:19:00.000-07:00

In case I don't get a chance for sightseeing, I have been doing some reseach in advance and some armchair travel of my own. Check out this collection from the area, that includes the backs of some cards.

From New Plymouth to Plymouth

2010-09-03T04:10:00.000-07:00

Found this postcard of Plymouth, 1921. Wonder how much of this scene is still present. Perhaps those collectors at Plymouth Postcard Collectors Club could tell me. Or maybe the collectors at Postcard Collecting UK have got a similar shot? I will shortly have the opportunity to find out for myself.

I am very grateful to Creative NZ for funding aspects of my travel to Plymouth to participate in the opening programme for Sightseeing. I leave on 22nd September and for the opening I will happily be joined by Anne Noble, one of the NZ artists included in the project.

I was born in a place called New Plymouth, New Zealand, so travelling to the original Plymouth is at some level a weird tourism of inversion or time travel, as I travel from New to Old. I will be sure to collect lots of postcards from this journey.

It's a date

2010-08-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

The opening date is a two-step affair at Peninsula Arts, University of Plymouth. It sounds rather grand to call it a world premier, so I am going to run with it! Put all modesty aside. The exhibition runs from 13 September until 23 October, but the official opening is 24 September. In a moment of true serendipity the exhibition opens in Wellington, New Zealand on the same day that it closes in the UK.

You've got mail

2010-07-14T21:50:00.000-07:00

A postcard arrived today at work, from one of the artists involved in Sightseeing. The message enthuses about the food in Tokyo, which is in keeping with bright array of nigiri sushi on show. In some ways, it’s a very straightforward photo, a product shot. Uniform, even light makes every piece of wet fish glisten. The subdued backdrop makes the colour of the seafood pop. The contrast between light and dark areas creates a dramatic tension in an otherwise innocuous subject. The gravity for me in this postcard image though is the way that the sushi is laid out a kind of index or catalogue of sushi, organised by type. There is a ritual at work in this image, on so many levels. It made my day.

News

2010-07-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a re/preview that came out in the May issues of Art News NZ, Vol 30 #2 of Sightseeing (click on the image to see it larger).

Paper Police Part II

2010-07-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

My previous post on the Paper Police has been rewarded with another missive from Kassel. I returned their "original piece of evidence" postcard with an Alice in Wonderland quote from the white rabbit, "I'm late, I'm late I'm late, for a very important date..." because my postcard was sent too late for the deadline in the Crime/Scenes project. I got a reply today and I have scanned the envelope too because the aesthetics of it are rather nice.

The "Too Stupid" postcard is another blank one, (printed in France 2004) so the temptation to continue the correspondence is there.

Only in America

2010-07-07T03:56:00.000-07:00

Would they have the critical mass to pull of a project like this one, on folk postcard photography, which illuminates a specific moment in the history of photography. What a fanastic cover image. The postcards themselves sound like a wonderful elision of documentary photographic trace, and a semi-public semi-private form of communication. You can read the publisher's description here.

I can't help but think with these small-run real-photo postcards of the current way in which photography circulates in social media, between a tacitly closed network that is both public and private at the same time.
Thanks to Dr Mc for this one.

Paper Police

2010-06-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

An unsolicited package came across my desk yesterday emanating from Kassel and addressed to a colleague at the Auckland Art Gallery. Not quite anonymous, because it does include a return address, it contains three separate initiatives that immediately remind me of Fluxus impulses.

• The first was an A4 bound book containing collected photocopies – a Collective Copy book.

• The second was an invitation to participate in a project called Crime/Scenes by submitting on a postcard an original piece of evidence, “whatever that might be and whatever it represents.”

• The third appeared to be a flyer promoting The Artists’ Memory, a limited edition multiple/picture/game comprised of 68 cards designed by 34 artists with a special metal frame to fit all cards.

Of course, the postcard immediately caught my eye, funnelling evidence through the mail system’s franking and dating system cues immediately into mail art, doubling the process of giving evidence. A list of recipients and addresses appears on the title page for the Collective Copy book creating a chain-mail effect, so the connotations continue. And the game/multiple cards let’s say it appealed to my sense of play.

I posted the postcard today.

Thinking about installation

2010-06-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

This post was a timely prompt to write about the presentation of the postcards as an exhibition experience. People seem to have lots of questions about this aspect of the project. Jim Barr and Mary Barr were describing an exhibition at the Moderna Museet, a retrospective of Diane Arbus' photography. Like Sightseeing the Arbus exhibition doesn't feature original prints. The full title for the exhibition is Pierre Leguillon presents Diane Arbus: a printed retrospective, 1960–1971. The exhibition presents her photographs in their original context as they were experienced in popular media. Interestingly, this unconventional project was put together by French artist Pierre Leguillon and you can read a short and insightful interview with him here.

I enjoyed his move to present Arbus' work in this way, it draws a ritual around the ways in which photography is used, its functions but also what photography is, where does the photographic image reside: the negative/the print/the publication or none or all of these manifestations? It makes so salient the way in which photography and its resulting images can be conflated and distinct all at once.

In the words of the Barrs: "It also nailed the anachronism of the ‘is photography art?’ conversation that still has some play in New Zealand even today. Everyone can relax, the votes have been counted: photography is art when it’s art, in the same way that drawing, painting and carving aren’t art when they're not."

What struck me of course about Leguillon's use of ephemera in an art context is the structural similarity to Sightseeing. I was fascinated to observe his approach to installation too, the effect within the exhibition space of all this collateral/original material en mass. The Arbus project is a heartening example of the way in which we might think about exhibitions a little differently, a little lightly.

They also chose to include the crates for the project, a signal of the mobility of this touring exhibition. Again that aspect is something that will be captured with Sightseeing, because postcards have their own inherent function as a both a medium and a method of communication.

Thanks A.

From Art and Asia Pacific

2010-06-14T05:12:00.000-07:00

I couldn't help but notice that the magazine Art & Asia Pacific had started a column in the magazine with postcards from curators... in various locales. The current issue looks like this (click on it, for a bigger image). It's dubious content for a magazine, but good fodder for blogs.

Quote for the day

2010-05-10T03:51:00.000-07:00

Frohnapfel has used postcards as part of the wider Border Horizon’s project, second hand postcards from before the fall of the Berlin wall, which she weaves into her own project. These historical artefacts take on the quality of an historical witness. The suite of six “Fences” included in Sightseeing is only a fraction of the 200+ images in the series and has a more typographic emphasis than is typical of the series overall. Frohnapfel creates a “phenomenology of the border.” In contrast to the experience of physical borders in Europe, New Zealand is an island country. Our priorities for border control are more biological than territorial.

Her images are not sites that would normally be worthy of tourist photography, but of course to the eyes of the island traveller without a European passport, the borders are a site of curiosity, a liminal zone, a point of transition. Frohnapfel’s images depart from “the pictorial effect produced by pre-fabricated tourist subjects,” they shift us into a view of tourism that challenges questions of identity, location and place. She describes the ways in which travel is a highly subjective encounter, layered with history and personal experience.

“I also have, like many tourists, a vague idea of what it is that I am going to see, but I am still prepared time and time again to risk leaving it to the actual encounter. It was in this word, ‘tourist’, then, that a part of my eventual title was also to be found: the tour – and since I continually, and fairly rapidly, used to return to my point of departure, then from that was derived: Retour.” - Doris Frohnapfel “Borders of perception” in Border Horizons p14

The circularity of this quotation keeps me coming back, the idea that travel is a cyclic state; of departure and return, expedition and homecoming, or like postcards, sending and receiving. It also points to that liminal zone of border territories and how they are subjective, shifting, amorphous things. Photography and tourism have had a very long and rewarding history together, photography of course anchors moments in space and time, and in Doris' series, Border Horizons, the borders of Europe become empirically observed places.

THE RETURN OF INVESTMENT

2010-04-18T03:52:00.000-07:00

Doris Frohnapfel's solo exhibition is at Gallery M29/ RICHTER&BRÜCKNER at OPEN SPACE, 44th ART COLOGNE, 21.-25.4.2010. See http://www.m29.info/ and http://www.openspace-cologne.com/ for more details.

Anyplace

2010-04-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have been vascillating about this project of postcard mail art. In the end I have decided to post on it, based largely on their sense of discovery: the research aspect of the project embodied in their post from Friday, February 12, 2010. I enjoyed the self-reflexive gesture of their research about their own place, and the conclusion with the generic "your town, anystate" postcard find. This dovetails so precisely with Esther's sense of the generic and standardised treatment of landscape that I could not resist to share it.

Thanks Cornelius.. and Kerry

On Show

2010-04-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

On the Wireless

2010-04-11T02:49:00.000-07:00

You can listen to the interview about Sightseeing on National Radio's Arts on Sunday.

Booked

2010-03-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

A few happy snaps from the Book Launch in Wellington held on Thursday 25th March at Massey University's Engine Room. The photographs were taken by Jane. The image above was taken during the speeches, while Christophe Mucher from the Goethe Institut, Wellington was making a warm and funny presentation that chronicled his invovlement in the project from its early days, and making Ann Shelton an honorary German for delivering the publication on budget and on time.

The book is available at Academy Books Company online, or by emailing Helena Hunt at Massey h.m.Hunt@massey.ac.nz .

So here are the three main protagonists of the publication. Ann Shelton is in the middle between Esther Ruelfs the German essayist on our right, and Hanna Scott the curator of the project on our left. Somehow, and with his usual modesty, Duncan Munro managed to avoid being photographed on the night. He was the other essential ingredient in the making and production of the publication.

Below is another presentation, this time by Jeremy Diggle, Head of School at Massey University School of Fine Arts.

The students at Massey did a fine job of making everyone feel very welcome on the night, thank you to them all for their dedication to the project.

From Postcard to Poster: Meet Duncan

2010-03-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

This poster to promote Esther Ruelf's lecture on Thursday night was designed by Duncan Munro. I notice that Munro made it into the news recently (the New Zealand Marketing Magazine) when he won, with Claire Stapelton, a Bolly award for his Met Service campaign executed by ad agency Y&R. It isn't the first time that Munro has achieved accolades. Duncan's name has come up in a few posts already, so it seems like now is the hour to introduce him.

Duncan is an art director and designer with over 20 years experience in New Zealand's design and advertising industries. Combining a passion for both design and the arts, recent projects include Ann Shelton's Room Room and Once more with Feeling publications and a TV advertising campaign for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra; Heather Straka's The Sleeping Room; her Frances Hodgkins Fellowship publication which sold out, and Pippa Sanderson’s The Blue room; a group exhibition of 'psychic' responses.

As curator, it is important to me that the designer is involved in a project from the early stages. In fact, Duncan has been involved with the project almost since its inception, channeling his visual thinking into the publication and now into the exhibition design and branding. Thus he has had a strong hand in shaping the project visually and conceptually. It is the perfect time to acknowledge that Duncan has provided a steady hand to the Sightseeing project and a talented eye over some very intense weeks of editing and proofing.

By Hook or by Crook: the Book is here

2010-03-22T02:19:00.000-07:00

This hand made mock up of the publication was just sent to me as a JPEG in advance of the BOOK LAUNCH on Thursday night. A unique format publication, SIGHTSEEING is packaged in a box set and includes 90 colour plates in the form of postcards. It is published in both German and English.

Join the editors, along with the German essayist Esther Ruelfs, for the launch of SIGHTSEEING, which includes photographs by Mark Adams, Fiona Amundsen, Karin Apollonia-Müller, Wayne Barrar, Frank Breuer, Jeremy Diggle, John Di Stefano, Elger Esser, Doris Frohnapfel, Eva Leitolf, Anne Noble, Haruhiko Sameshima, Sarah Schönfeld and Shmuel Hoffman, Grit Schwerdtfeger, and Ann Shelton.

WHEN Thursday 25 March, 7.00pm

WHERE The Engine Room, Massey University, Entrance C, Wallace St, Wellington

Edited by Ann Shelton and Hanna Scott. Essays by Esther Ruelfs and Hanna Scott
Published 2010 by Rim Books, Auckland

ISBN 978-0-473-16560-5

An ENORMOUS well done to Duncan and Ann who shepherded the book through the last stages of editing, translating, press press and printing. Looking forward to seeing the real thing.

Pop, Post-Minimal Postcards

2010-03-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Since 2001 Katharina Fritsch has been creating screen-printed enlargements of postcards. Her works reproduce the banality of these social souvenirs but creates the atmosphere of a bill board scale image. The scale of the screen-prints challenges the nature of a postcard as a form of communication between sender and receiver. In her installation at White Cube her works were based on postcards sent to the artist from her Grandfather (she was born 1956 in Essen). The nostalgic quality of the original postcards creates a time-shift in a similar way to the works of Elger Esser do, a curious resonant new image lifted from a now obscured past moment. The patina of age implied in Fritsch’s work is shot-through with solid colour overlaying these commonplace scenes with the full spectrum of contemporary advertising and pop aesthetic.

Image 1: a very tiny version of 7. Postcard (Essen) 2005, Edition of 3, Silkscreen print and forex, 2000 x 2860mm
Image 2: a very tiny version of 8. Postcard (Essen) 2005, Edition of 3, Silkscreen print and forex, 2000 x 2860mm

Journeys with No Return

2010-02-20T02:15:00.000-08:00

The title of this project attracted my ear initially, and then after doing some reading, I began to appreciate the mobility of the project and how thoroughly appropriate it is for a show of this nature to be able to journey about from place to place. Journeys with no return is currently in its second incarnation in the UK, and runs until the 14 March, from there it will re-appear in Berlin during the European summer (June/July). The project is ostensibly about migration, and knowing that there are at least as many stories on migration as there are migrants, their media release stakes a tentative position that, "perhaps.... the phenomenon of migration is more than the sum of its individual stories." The title is catchy, the journey is left hanging and it asks a leading question over the nature of belonging and what the end point of migration might be. I look forward to more reports on this.

Image: Nevin Aladag, Raise the Roof, 2007, Performance and video installation. For more, visit here.

Big Ben

2010-02-15T03:29:00.000-08:00

Installed on one of the big walls at Te Tuhi as part of the exhibition Unpacking My Library there is a work by Elizabeth McAlpine that is made up of postcards. McAlpine's project is a cumulative one, as she creates a 12-hour record of Big Ben using found postcards. The postcards are exhibited behind perspex covers, with spaces left for the project to continue as additional postcards are found to fill in the chronology.

The exhibition is curated by Stephen Cleland at Te Tuhi and makes reference to ideas of archives, collections and libraries. Ann Shelton is also included in the exhibition with her video made from the interior pages of the Butler collection books, softly turning over and chronicling the long-hand entries therein.

Image: Elizabeth McAlpine, Found Time (2008-ongoing), found postcard of Big Ben

Only the Lonely

2010-02-12T02:02:00.000-08:00

One of the alternative titles for the project was “A lonely planet” but after reviewing their website and observing their strict IP protection policy I thought it was prudent to chance tactics. That got me wondering about just how lonely our overpopulated planet really is. Tourism is the world’s biggest industry, it keeps the economies of whole countries afloat.

When I began to consider Antarctica, that last bastion of an untouched sublime, an “unpopulated” continent too hostile for human habitation, it became apparent that it is anything but untouched, or even remotely lonely. Full time research stations, oil exploration and tourism are in full swing. To cap it all off, Lonely Planet have a guidebook to Antarctica. It is in its fourth edition, with a fifth edition expected in 2011. On the contrary, I concluded that far from being lonely or unloved, our planet is over loved, over exploited and not lonely enough.

Image: Chinstrap Penguins, Ross Sea.

Here, there and everywhere

2010-02-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

YOU ARE HERE (2009) 62 minutes, is John Di Stefano’s latest film, which is in official competition at the 2010 Documentary Edge Film Festival. It is one of eight films selected in the New Zealand Category. Like earlier works HUB (2000) the new film emphasises mobility and displacement. It also draws on an autobiographical trajectory in Di Stefano's work that is played out in works such as the photographs Casa (2006-2008) made in his ancestral home in Italy.

He says, "YOU ARE HERE is an essayistic, autobiographical film examining the search for home in our era of transnational displacement. By retracing the filmmaker’s trajectory through three continents, the film offers a meditation on the nation, mobility and belonging."

Image: John Di Stefano, You Are Here (2009)

Extinction Tourism

2010-01-28T03:15:00.000-08:00

As cruise ships, each carrying up to 1,000 tourists, contribute to marine pollution in Antarctica, it raises for me a perplexing question. We seem to be operating under the spell of a very special vein of narcissism. Will humans flock to witness Antarctica's retreat and perpetuate their own demise, under the rubric of “see it before it’s gone” climate tourism (a bleak subset of what is self-reflexively called, extinction tourism)? It seems so. Although reports indicate that the recession is dampening enthusiasm for travel to the Antarctic. Will we be there to take photographs of our selves at the edge of the habitable world as we slide into the endless summer of global warming and rising sea levels? Or will be satisfied with simulated experiences?

Image: Anne Noble

Boring Postcards

2010-01-18T04:15:00.000-08:00

No mention of contemporary art postcards would be complete without extensive reference to UK photographer Martin Parr. He as edited several books on postcards, including Boring Postcards USA (2000) and Langweilige Postkarten (Boring Postcards Germany) (2001) well as staging projects such as The Last Resort (1983-1986). His work has been a source of reference throughout my research, because of the way that he uses documentary photography as a form of resistance that borders on activism and for the ironic sense of typology that also underpins his practice.

Conceptual German artist Hans-Peter Feldman was mining similar territory in 1990 with Untitled (Eiffel Tower), but as an inveterate collector, Feldman was using found imagery.

A quote for the holiday season

2010-01-17T21:01:00.000-08:00

"The notion of "travel" as I've been using it, cannot possibly cover all the different displacements and interactions I've just invoked. Yet it has brought me into these borderlands.

I hang on to "travel" as a term of cultural comparison precisely because of this historical taintedness, its associations with gendered, racial bodies, class privilege, specific means of convenance, beaten paths, agents, frontiers, documents and the like.... "

James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, p39

A muse

2009-12-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

I am fascinated by the blogs that crop up to record or exploit the social networking aspect of postcards, as if using technology is a way of galvanising the role that postcards have played in the past. I am thinking of sites such as PostMuse or My Real Wall which both have a massive, almost frenetic output. Rapid forms of communication such as email, texting and blogging itself has taken market share from the postcard domain, so it's perverse and fascinating that blogging is the medium of choice to record this mailing activity. It was of course one of the reasons that I wanted to establish a blog for Sightseeing, to account for the impact that digital media has made on the format and function of the postcard.

Image: The backs of the postcards I have received from Postcrossing.

Anti-travel Writing

2009-12-13T02:02:00.000-08:00

There is a long, but fascinating post here about an emergent genre "anti-travel writing". It includes a five-step "how to" guide for students or enthusiasts, with lots of interesting asides. There is also a more recent post about Hamlin's Hill reserve in Auckland that demonstrates the techniques in action, also with interesting asides. Reading the Maps describes some of the ideas around anti-tourism that also inform Sightseeing, so there will be more on this at a later date. The image above reminds me of the postcard that started off the whole postcards project, of Marsden Point, the oil refinery in Northland. His posts certainly takes the polish off Clean & Green, or 100% Pure New Zealand typically associated with the local travel industry.

Image: From Reading the Maps, over farmland towards Huntly Power Station.

Dark but comely

2009-12-13T01:13:00.000-08:00

The title of this work "Dark but Comely", makes reference to an Iles photograph, made into a postcard in the early 20th century (S. M & Co Series). The artist has manipulated the historical image to highlight the contrivances of colonial photography that created the 'dusky maiden' genre.

This image expresses those over-the-top indicators of otherness, such as traditional or ceremonial attire that so often become generic studio props. However her image is devoid of an individual identity, which belies the anonymity of the historical Maori sitter. The blank and blacked out face absorbs the stereotypical aestheticisation of Maori women.

The work is by Sarah Peti Sian Hudson (of Ngati Awa, Tuhoe descent) who is currently completing a Master of Fine Arts Degress at Massey University in Wellington. Thanks to Bonny Stewart Macdonald, a Research Assistant at Massey University for bringing this work to my attention.

Eigenzeit

2009-11-24T16:39:00.000-08:00

Elger Esser has been making new work for the Sightseeing exhibition and at the same time, preparing for a his first large survey show, to be held at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart - Das Museum: "ELGER ESSER. EIGENZEIT. It opens this weekend, 28 NOVEMBER 2009 and runs until 11 APRIL 2010, and it travels to Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem. The Kunstmuseum describes Esser in Proustian terms, as setting out again and again, "in search of lost time" - the title of the exhibition translates as "proper time" (or "own time").

The idea of telescoping time through photographs is fascinating, Esser's works are laced with an implicit nostalgia, the colour space of his images recalls handcoloured printing techniques, the images he uses are created from historical appropriations. But the idea of time being "lost" and of things having their "own" time exposes the 'feedback loop' in Esser's work, where the past influences the present, and the two, history and the present, interact in a non-linear paradigm of time.

But enough metaphysics, Esser uses found postcards from his extensive historical collection of Breton and Norman seaside views as source material for his images. Selecting a small section of them, and enlarging them to the point where the grain becomes apparent, Esser's images are lyrical and strange. Often depicting waterery views, the images are serene, but also unreal. They depict time as something lost, but also as worthy of retrieval.

Image: Elger Esser, Saint Andre de Cubzac, Frankreich 1996, C-Type print, VG Bild-Kunst 2009

Found

2009-11-23T17:05:00.000-08:00

During research I came across Paul Greenleaf, a photographer in the UK who is using found postcards as framework for photographing landscape. His series Correspondence uses the original message on the cards as the title for the new work, and Greenleaf exhibits large prints as well as the postcard themselves side-by-side.

Greenleaf was one artist I looked at in terms the installation of Sightseeing, and also the way in which I wanted the postcards to function as cards, not as limited edition, exhibition prints. I quite like for instance the way that he has used the postcard stand in this shot as a signify of mobility.

Later on I became interested in the idea of "The Return", revisiting a site to photograph again, (and again, and again). Many of the artists involved with Sightseeing operate in this mode of returning, revisiting and reconsidering a site; or using a cultural artifact (a movie, an historical document, or in Greenleaf's case - a postcard) as the framework for making images.

Image: Installation Shot, Photographers Gallery UK, "Fresh Faced and Wild Eyed 2008"

Anne Noble - Arts Laureate

2009-11-17T14:05:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to photographer Anne Noble, one of the artists included in Sightseeing. It was just announced last night that she was awarded the distinction of Arts Laureate by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. Perfect.

Image: Anne Noble, from the series Ruby's Room (1998-ongoing).

Across the International Date Line

2009-11-16T14:35:00.000-08:00

This series from 2005 by Marine Hugonnier telescopes time, using a historical moment as a framework to visit a contemporary site. Called "Beach of the New World" the series was shot in Brasil, where Pedro Cabral [was] accosted on 23 April, 1500. Hugonnier's approach is interesting to me, because it is similar to the strategies used by Mark Adams in Sightseeing, where the artist revists sites from New Zealand's history. Both projects overlay or map the landscape across different temporal moments, tracing the ways in which landscape can be a cultural as much as physical encounter.

Another series by Hugonnier Towards Tomorrow was taken across the international date line at the Bering Strait in Alaska (looking towards Siberia). Siberia, the artist explains, is 24 hours ahead of Alaska in time, so the photographs represent "a future moment." I was particularly interested in this work for the way in which it identifies a border which is imperceptible. It articulates the very arbitrary nature of borders, a theme that is also explored in Sightseeing.

Thanks to Bonny Stewart-MacDonald, a Research Assistant working on Sightseeing, for this reference.

Image: Marine Hugonnier Beach of the New World, Monte Pascoal National Park, Brasil 2005

Breaking News

2009-11-10T02:57:00.000-08:00

I have recently learned here with some consternation (because I probably should have known already) that last month, October, was the 140th birthday of the postcard. Australian postcard enthusiast Beth Sometimes has just published a book to mark the occassion. You can read more here.

Take a Tour

2009-11-10T02:51:00.000-08:00

There are just more and more gems turning up all the time. On this site you can take a virtual postcard tour of New Zealand with historical images. I picked this image, of my home town, New Plymouth on the West coast of the North Island.

Image: from John Elsbury's collection of the breakwater, New Plymouth.

Typography as a Window

2009-11-10T01:18:00.001-08:00

Here's a post about vintage postcards from much earlier in the year, from Auckland Art Gallery curator, Ron Brownson. Ron's typography examples are similar postcards we found in our research for Sightseeing, and you will be able to see (soon-ish) the contemporary design and typography for Sightseeing by Duncan Monro. It has been a fascinating project to research from a graphic design point of view. Even the waterfall format that we are pursuing has many and varied historical precedents.

It was during this very early research phase that I found a postcard collected by my husband Craig, which was "Printed in Germany." It was an image of an 'exotic' genre known as a "Maori Maiden". It was this find that started me thinking about German photography and the possible connections between these two countries.

Image: Ellerback (active 1900-1910) silver gelatin print, red ink wash. Private collection.

Ink on paper

2009-11-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

The late Ray Johnson had an exhibition "Please add to and return" at Raven Row and it has now just opened at MACBA, where it runs until January 2010. He is credited with inadvertantly creating the mail art movement by creating alternative networks to construct and distribute images. You can see images here and on the MACBA site, they have installation shots. It is interesting to see these once transgressive artefacts presented framed and behind glass, they're such deliciously tactile things, but also now very fragile and precious.

Image: Ray Johnson, Untitled 1980, mailing, 21.6 x 27.9 cm, Estate of Ray Johnson & Richard L Feigan & Co.

Laps around the world

2009-11-06T02:18:00.001-08:00

If you have an appetite for statistics, the postcrossing site has the postcards pages for you. It is a project that allows anyone to recieve real postcards from random places in the world. Moreover, it tracks the postcards travelling around the world from A to B. They keep tabs on the more than 150,000 members, the miles clocked up by the postcards, the number of postcards sent per hour (271). Apparently, deltiology (postcard collecting) is the third largest hobby in the world (after stamp collecting and money collecting).

Image: Postcard from the Postcrossing gallery pages.

You've Got Mail

2009-10-19T04:09:00.000-07:00

I am not wanting this project to morph into mail art, but I have been enjoying the gorgeous stamps associated with my international mail. This package arrived yesterday from Sarah Schoenfeld. After making notes inside, I repackaged it, and sent it on to Duncan (the designer). It accumulated a few more stamps in the process. I used the Matariki Stamps of the Heitiki that a friend of mine developed with NZ post.

Marsden Point

2009-10-19T03:47:00.001-07:00

“Why would you make and exhibit postcards of this landscape?” This was the question that first popped into my head when I saw this vintage postcard. I promptly added the card to my collection, not knowing of course that it would become the touchstone of an exhibition project nearly 5 years later.

The landscape is Marsden Point – a blot on the landscape of Whangarei in my eyes, but according to the think-big mentality of the era it was going to redeem our country in very many ways. Because that postcard is vintage – it takes on the quality of artefact more readily. But exhibiting contemporary images makes a similar point about the politics of representation, what would happen for example, if we showed postcards of crime scenes?

PS: You can click on the images to get a larger version, and read the caption.

The background

2009-10-19T03:37:00.001-07:00

SIGHTSEEING evolved from an invitation by Massey University’s Photographic Research Cluster in late 2007 to develop an exhibition idea around landscape and site - a loci of research in the cluster. The framework of “Picture Postcards” was developed, researched and tested. Early research revealed that Germany was the birthplace of the picture postcard and the possibility of an exchange project was mooted. The Goethe Institute responded with enthusiasm.

SIGHTSEEING is an intensive, innovative and ambitious project, with over 96 images involved, and 16 artists. The postcards format creates a distinct new context for making art that has a high degree of cultural resonance.

Contributor

2009-10-17T01:55:00.000-07:00

Delighted to welcome art historian Esther Ruelfs as essayist and a key contributor to the Sightseeing project. She is pictured above with Tobias Berger, with whom she co-curated the 3.Foto-Festival "Images Recalled" You can read a short biography of her work here.

She was also a recent contributor to The Black Snapper with a week long project on their site.

Image: Curator's pic, from the Foto-Festival website

From the Black Sea (via Germany)

2009-10-14T00:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday this postcard arrived from Germany, the sender was Doris Frohnapfel. The image is from a much larger series entitled Border Horizons - Photographs from Europe which has been widely exhibited in many forms. Doris is part of a constellation of artists that are actively using the postcard format as a medium of its own. A method as well as a medium of communication.

Image: Doris Frohnapfel Looking over to the European bank of the Bosporus and the Black Sea, (TR) 19.10.2003 and the reverse of the postcard with delicate German stamps.

Maoriland

2009-10-13T03:34:00.000-07:00

Gallerist Paul McNamara is staging an exhibition of postcards too, by Wellington photographer Murray Lloyd. The exhibition examines Maori Land Rights by making reference to historical postcards of exotic "Maoriland" destinations from the late 19th/early 20th century. (Thanks H)

Lloyd's referencing is particularly interesting for the way in which it exposes the research role of the artist.

The project is also interesting to me for the way that it telescopes time, eliding historical and contemporary scenarios together.

Image: "Foreshore and Seabed" by Murray Lloyd. See the full text here.

50 villages

2009-10-12T18:58:00.001-07:00

Particularly enjoyed the approach to geography inherent in this project in Palestine. It harnesses ideas of mobility that are fundamental also to the Sightseeing project.

For Sale

2009-10-06T17:46:00.000-07:00

At the recent Auction at Webbs here in Auckland a suite of 4 or so antique postcard albums went for good prices - well above their estimates. Largely black and white postcards of early NZ, there were also cards from international travels. The albums were beautiful things, well kept and a perfect reminder of the heyday of the postcard, considered to be 1890-1914 when collecting became a craze.

"The postcard craze peaked in NZ around 1909, when reportedly 7.5 million cards were sent through the mail. As well, many more were sent in envelopes." A quote from William Main, Send Me A Postcard: New Zealand postcards and the story they tell NZ: Craig Potton, 2007

2009-10-03T02:29:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes tourism seems to be understood as little more than the collection of disparate and unconnected sights wich are given an objectified form in travel brochures, postcards and photographs."

- Carol Crawshaw and John Urry "Tourism and the Photographic Eye" in Touring Cultures: transformations of travel and theory, p178

And then later, in the same text:

"Indeed the travel photographer and the tourist seem to engage in a mutually reinforcing social process of constructing and altering images of place and experiences." p192

Blind Spots

2009-09-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

The Photospot project at the Centre of Land Use Interpretation in 1995 is a project that sits alongside the Sightseeing project, in the sense that it foregrounds the kinds of places that don't typically get 'seen' or photographed from a touristic point of view. The PhotoSpot project was initiated by Media Artists Melinda Stone and Igor Vamos, they erected

"over 50 "Suggested Photo Spot" signs at selected sites from coast to coast. Sights designated as a "Suggested Photo Spot" include the tailings pile of a copper mine and the waste water treatment facility for the Kodak company's headquarters.

The spots are not selected simply according to the function of facilities or land uses at the site. Criteria for selecting Photo Spots primarily relate to tourist photography issues, based on visual and aesthetics considerations, and a sense of what might be "photogenic". "

You can read more about it here.

Image: Igor Vamos and Photo Spot, CLUI

365 postcards made by hand

2009-09-29T02:08:00.001-07:00

Here is another recooperative project using postcards as a medium. http://emilygrenader.com/365postcards.php

Postcards of Vilnius

2009-09-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, this image arrived in my inbox. It is a postcard artwork made by Arunas Gudaitis

entitled "Vilnius Postcard Series 2009" It was commissioned as part of the Triennial in Vilnius. You can read more about it here:

http://www.cac.lt/en.php/exhibitions/triennial/urban_stories/urban_stories/29881

They say, "This has generated a plethora of works that are based on a contemporary version of armchair travelling or idiosyncratic local research, works that offer parallel [hi]stories, based on a mixture of rumours and half-truths, hard facts and reliable information. Films, sculptures, performances and installations that offer, a phantasmagorical portrait of an existent city, to borrow from Laimonas Briedis‘ book Vilnius – City of Strangers (2008), or that examine a real place that seems as ‘illusionary’ as Disney’s town ‘Celebration’ or New York’s ‘Roosevelt Island. As a whole the exhibition will position Vilnius as both Everywheresville and Nowheresville, it will scrutinize the fictional character of real places and the reality of imaginary spaces."

The idea of armchair travelling is one that I want to explore by making postcards with work by 16 artists from both New Zealand and Germany. That idea is one of the backbones of the Sightseeing project.

A Benevolent Day

2009-09-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

Today is a good to initate an online forum for the Sightseeing project that I have been working on for over a year. Today I found this charming blog. http://benevolentpostcardsociety.blogspot.com/ This is one of the online projects that reveals a real nostalgia for postcards and their function. It is fascinating that blogging is the forum for such projects, because blogging and other forms of rapid digital communication has eclipsed the need to send postcards.