Sea-In

An exhibition of photographs by Beverley Southcott

1 July – 28 August 2005

Bay Discovery Centre – City of HoldfastBay

Seeing is Believing

Sea-In: the Photography of Beverley Southcott

Contemporary society and culture are underpinned by the visual, especially by the photographic image in all it forms. We are accustomed, indeed thoroughly trained through experience, to apprehend the world through the distorting lenses of cultural and commercial entrepreneurs. Advertising is especially part of our culture, a culture of consumption that, more than ever, establishes the identity of the consumer/ viewer. So accustomed to the barrage of media imagery have we become that we rarely stop to unpack the images that we see, to identify the elements of these visual composites and analyse how they might affect us.

In her recently completed Master of Visual Arts paper, Beverley Southcott asked,

Is it possible that the phenomenon of the contemporary corporate-controlled urban environment – as epitomised by the enclosed shopping mall and high-rise office block (protected by high tech surveillance) paradoxically is giving rise to the development of an art practice which represents a new kind of spirituality – one which is secular, complex and inclusive rather than religious and reductive?[1]

The images in this exhibition are of a suburban Adelaide beach, although it could be any beach and any strollers. These are seascapes, postcards, calendar photos, posters, or billboards. The seductive scenic photograph is a tradition in modern visual culture, often found in tourist bureaux, frequently evoking romantic destinations and holiday-altered states of being. Such framed imagery has become fetishised, a substitute for direct experience.

The awesome spectacle can induce a kind of un-nameable fear in the viewer. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century landscape painting, such as that of JMW Turner, established the idea of the Romantic sublime. The shift of the depiction of the sublime from landscape painting to landscape photography followed in the work, for example, of Ansel Adams. Alfred Steiglitz, among others, portrayed a modern, urban architectural sublime.

Nineteenth Century German painter Caspar David Friedrich is a pivotal figure in the depiction of the sublime. In his works he placed the speculating everyman, whose subjectivity we are invited to share, into an overwhelming, majestic space. It is to his work that Southcott directly refers. By photographing anonymous passers by at the beach, Southcott creates a spatial and topographic parallel to Friedrich’s work, but she draws us into a contemporary picture. Additionally, she strategically places text into the sky and highlights the figures, suggesting a mystical or religious interaction between the figures and a higher authority. What interactions are occurring?

Southcott has an abiding concern with the imagery of popular culture, especially advertising. In previous works she has used photography to question commercial activity. Placing the images in this exhibition into the context of advertising emphasises the commercial nature of the transactions associated with contemporary consumer culture. The prayer Send Us an Angel bespeaks desire and the “affluenza” that afflicts our society. Is the helicopter an angel looking after us? And in a secular society, do we construct our own angels rather than relying on the god-given? The term Sublime Indifference is an ironic binary. The text marches along a distant horizon like a TV caption, but the walkers on the beach appear indifferent, suggesting that their awareness is turned inwards, away from worldly preoccupations. Un Reel ambiguously suggests the reel of film, the fishing reel, and the play on ‘real’. The phrase Buy Back Offer suggests the sales pitch, even the shady deal, but also hints at the possibility of finding redemption. Win Sum Daze suggests gains to be made, the collapsing of day with daze, the blur that passes for/ as a day, or a winsome daze. Sum Return is another play on words, suggesting that some (people will) return or that an investor may gain a sum/some return on an investment. These expressions appear as elements of a childlike struggle towards (English) comprehension. The phrases are like koans to be deciphered, expressed in a clipped, broken ‘newspeak’ that characterises contemporary verbalisations such as text messages. Our world has developed a unique vernacular geared to the instant transaction, the decoding of which yields enlightenment. Sum Return also refers to the artist’s own return to South Australia after an extended period interstate, and in that respect this photo-essay records a pilgrimage.

In these images, we see from the esplanade the view that limns the suburbs. This beach is not the wild, untamed outdoors of Turner, Friedrich or Adams. Especially in Adelaide, beaches are manicured leisure resorts, central to suburban lifestyle. The experience of the sublime is subtle in such a setting. Southcott’s overwriting of these scenes subverts our subjective illusion of the sanctity of the sites themselves. Having to decode a scene of beauty contradicts it. These works function both affectively and intellectually, the tension between the two aspects evoking the sublime.

Many artists have used text and photography to address social issues, such as Victor Burgin (for example Today is the tomorrow you were promised yesterday, 1976) and Barbara Kruger (for example Your comfort is my silence, 1981). Southcott’s work is in the lineage of photography-based conceptual art. But whereas Kruger discloses the viewer’s complicity in the exploitative commercial transaction, Southcott seems to draw the viewer into her confidence, almost conspiratorially. The ambiguity of Southcott’s texts prompts the viewer towards a range of responses, thus requiring us to establish our own position in relation both to the vista and to the message. We’re now haunted by what the scene represents, by what is absent from it and thus what is absent in our lives. Further, we must now consciously make a new connection with the concepts represented by the text.

Such imagery long ago became kitsch. The addition of the text updates the substance of the images, revitalising the notion of the sublime and locating it in contemporary culture. The glossy finish of the photographs emphasises the artificiality of the imagery and its reproduction. The contemporary sublime that is offered to us in these artworks proceeds partly from the subversion of photographic representation and the implied subversion of the real; partly from linguistic indeterminacy; and partly from the juxtaposition of text, figure-in-ground and viewer. The sublime at the beginning of the twenty-first century emerges from the collapsing of the visual spectacle and the revelation of the power of the image and of those who purvey images.

Chris Reid

June 2005

Acknowledgements:

I wish to thank:

Marianne Norman, Director Bay Discovery Centre for agreeing to my exhibitionand her professional advice and generous assistance for this exhibition. Chris Reid for his thoughtful, well researched catalogue essay. The Bay Discovery Centre’s staff and volunteers for their dedicated assistance towards this exhibition as well.

The HelpmannAcademy for their grant that assisted with the printing of the photographs. The SouthAustralianSchool of Art for the support I received for my Masters of Visual Arts – as this is the first exhibition of new solo works since finishing and stems from my masters research work.

Sala Festival 2005.

Paul Atkins at Atkins Technicolour for his technical assistance.

Orbit Design Group for graphic design and printing.

Always - W V. Southcott and my family for their on-going support.

IMAGES:

Front cover:Sea-In 3, 2005

Back Cover:Sea-In 5, 2005

Bay Discovery Centre – City of HoldfastBay

Open daily: 10 am to 5 pm

Mezzaine Gallery

Glenelg town hall

Moseley Square

Glenelg SA 5045

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[1] Southcott, Beverley 2004, Manifestations in contemporary photography of a new spiritual sensibility in response to globalisation and its effects, University of South Australia, p. ii.