SIMONE DOUGLAS // in group show 'Conditional/Return' at New York Gallery, Sara Nightingale Gallery

Image: Simone Douglas, Return, detail, in progress

Artereal Gallery artist Simone Douglas joins other Australian born, New York based artist, Zev Jonas, for Conditional/Return, an exhibition at Sara Nightingale Gallery, opening Friday 17 April from 6-8PM. 

The exhibition investigates alliances and kinships, as well as disconnects, between people, animals and their environments. Jonas’ contemplative photographs examine solitude in nature, while Douglas’ nautical sculpture - a reference to her upcoming large scale desert installation - suggests a merger or reunion with the land.

Jonas’ images, taken from his ongoing series, The Condition, explore the tension between isolation and connection, while considering the relationship we have with our surroundings. The work focuses on the beauty and sensuality of seclusion, as well as the search for a sense of purpose and place. Jonas shoots his work on film and presents it with minimal alteration. His images are untitled, undated and non-location-specific, so viewers can interact with the images with no preconceived notions.

Zev Jonas’ work has been exhibited in the US and Internationally. His solo exhibitions include a presentation at the Australian Consulate, New York timed with the release of a limited edition monograph, a copy of which is housed in the Rare Printed Collection of the State Library of Victoria in Australia. His 2011 solo show, Passage, in NY was a “Notable Show of the Year” in NY Photo Review.

Douglas’ Return encompasses work made over a decade of engagement with landscape and environment. It draws from two of her ongoing projects, Promise and Eternal Return. The former is based on a story of a search for the inland sea in the Australian desert; an explorer sails into the desert looking for the sea and finds himself in the ancient seabed. Douglas is constructing a large scale ship made of ice scheduled for installation in the Australian desert in July 2016. It’s mass has been calibrated so that it will take one month to melt completely, leaving in its wake a trace of red native wildflowers, watered by the melting boat. Eternal Return is a body of photo-based works that “hold night and day, the moon and the sun within one moment of extended time.”

Simone Douglas’ practice includes photography, video, sculpture, installation and site-specific works. She is committed to environmental legacy, intercultural facilitation and making art that serves as a medium to activate key issues of our time. Douglas has exhibited in museums internationally and her works are held in the public collections of the V&A Museum, London, the Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Douglas is the director of the MFA Fine Arts Program at Parsons The New School for Design and serves on the editorial committee of Project Anywhere. She is an honorary faculty member (Research) at The University of Sydney and has curated exhibitions at major international cultural institutions.

The exhibition will run from April 17 - May 17.

SIMONE DOUGLAS // ART & RESEARCH AT THE OUTERMOST LIMITS OF LOCATION SPECIFICITY

 Image: Simone Douglas, Eternal Return, 2014, dry mounted onto Dybond, 180 x 135cm

Internationally renowned artist and Director MFA Fine Arts Program Parsons, Simone Douglas, last week attended, co-organised and chaired the two-day conference 'Art & Research at the Outermost Limits of Location Specificity' alongside Sean Lowry.

The conference, which took place in New York as part of Project Anywhere, explored the challenge of producing and disseminating art and research outside traditional circuits.  

As part of the conference, the following questions were discussed and explored: 

• How should art and research that takes place outside traditional contexts and timeframes in the fields of the visual arts, design and performance be validated, experienced and disseminated? 
• What alternatives exist to the traditional role of the curator? 
• How should art and research be validated within institutional contexts that typically champion the traditional journal based-paradigm for evaluating research outcomes? 
• How do we negotiate the relative values of direct sense experience and exegetical and paratextual elements? 
• Is documentation necessarily a “second best” experience? 
• What kinds of evaluative criteria should we apply to interdisciplinary projects that straddle aesthetic and other realms? 
• What are the outermost limits of location-specificity?

The two-day conference was provided free of charge by Project Anywhere and Parsons Fine Arts, School of Art, Media and Technology, Parsons The New School for Design. 

Project Anywhere is an expanded international project space for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity. The role of curator is replaced with the type of peer review model typically endorsed by a refereed journal. This conference features presentations from international artists that have successfully navigated blind peer evaluation at the proposal stage within Project Anywhere’s 2013 and 2014 programs, together with a series of invited speakers and panel discussions featuring established artists, scholars, graduate students and arts professionals. This two-day event will bring a discursive world of new ideas from art at the outermost limits of location-specificity into critical focus. It marks a call to arms in the ongoing process of finding appropriate new models for the recognition, evaluation and dissemination of expanded art practices.

SIMONE DOUGLAS EMBARKS ON MOST AMBITIOUS PROJECT TO DATE

The exceptional artist Simone Douglas will embark on her most ambitious project to date in 2015 with the construction of a boat, 35m in length and made exclusively from ice, that will be erected in the outback on the outskirts of the isolated, far west city of Broken Hill.

The project, entitled Promise, has been in the works since July of this year and emerged from the artists’ fascination with one of Australia’s lesser-known tales – that of British Explorer, Charles Sturt, and his search for Australia’s inland sea. In 1828, the explorer and his men came close to death when they transported a large boat through floodwaters into the heat-stricken region, in search of a body of water. Instead, they became stranded in the desert and, were it not for the generosity of the resident indigenous community, Sturt and his men would have perished from lack of water.

The project will see the large-scale ice installation come in contact with the harsh Australian sunlight, causing it to gradually melt into the floor of the Broken Hill desert, offering hydration to the parched soil. The artist hopes the newly fertile soil will prompt the growth of wildflowers, serving as an afterthought of where the boat once stood and symbolic of the outcome of Sturt's expedition.  

“The Indigenous people saved them by generously sharing their precious water supplies. This story will come through as the ship of ice melts down back into the desert, it disappears, and the Indigenous people remain the ongoing custodians of the land,” said Douglas in an interview with Broken Hill Australia.

Douglas, who is born and raised in Australia, but currently based in New York City, continues her preoccupation with the Australian outback and the unique qualities of the Australian sun light through this new ambitious project.

Promise will also be brought to life as a documentary that will explore the region of Broken Hill as well as the artist’s work:

To read more about the project, visit Broken Hill Australia.

SIMONE DOUGLAS EXHIBITS WORK AT PINGYAO INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL

Australian born, NYC-based artist Simone Douglas this month journeyed to the ancient town of Pingyao, located in China's world-heritage listed Shanxi provence, for the 14th annual Pingyao International Photography Festival.

Douglas, whose exhibition with British photographer Christopher Bucklow, Sun to Sun, came to a close at Artereal Gallery last Saturday, was invited to exhibit a series of her work at the internationally acclaimed festival, joining some of the world's leading international photographers, where she spoke to audiences daily about her practice.

Since its inception in 2001, the Pingyao International Photography Festival has attracted over 16 million viewers and toured to international destinations including the USA, France, Japan, Spain, India, Belgium and Australia. 

 

SUN TO SUN / CHRISTOPHER BUCKLOW AND SIMONE DOUGLAS

This September, two internationally renowned photographers; London-based Christopher Bucklow and NYC-based Simone Douglas, have come together from across continents and hemispheres to explore their shared preoccupation with the ultimate natural light source, the sun, in a new exhibition at Artereal Gallery. 

Entitled Sun to Sun, the exhibition takes the form of a visual dialogue, with the enigmatic work of Simone Douglas responding to Christopher Bucklow’s acclaimed pin-hole photographic works. Marking their very first collaborative exhibition, Sun to Sun is the culmination of decades of dialogue between the artists, not only as peers but also close friends and admirers of each other’s work. 

“When we first met in 1994, we were immediately drawn to each others work. I was profoundly mesmerized by Chris’ images and way of working with light, the sun. This exhibition is the culmination of a long conversation that has continued across countries and time zones,” said Douglas. 

As one of the leading figures of the contemporary British ‘camera-less’ photography movement, Christopher Bucklow is known for his ethereal silhouettes of radiant men and women composed of thousands of pinhole photographs of the sun. His works are held within the world’s leading public art collections including the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, amongst others.

Simone Douglas commented: “As I first came into view of Chris’s work, I was profoundly struck by the duality of the body as made by multiple suns. I had been working with the singular sun and here was this artist who had filled the body with hundreds of suns via a camera-less technique that for all intents and purposes was indexical. It was a continuation of a long held desire to ‘fall into the universe’”. 

Currently working as the Director of the MFA Fine Arts Program at Parsons The New School for Design, Douglas has been exhibiting since the late 1980s across photography, video and installation. She has exhibited at and has work held in the collections of the Victor & Albert Museum London, The Tate Modern, London The Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, amongst others. 

In her new body of work, Douglas responds to Bucklow’s work with photographs that capture fractured snapshots of natural elements, evoking both the landscape and an almost primal connection to nature. 

“In the most remote, darkest corner of our universe, there is still light. A camera is a contemporary holder of light. I use a camera at times as it enables me to hold light as it were in my hands, to shape it. A final work might involve an image made using light and the camera conduit of light,” said Douglas. 

Christopher Bucklow commented: “While there are figures in my work, to me the spaces of Simone’s work are aspects of the human too. The landscape of the Australian interior is human, it’s a metaphor for a state of mind, almost a Zen-like field of being rather than a collected ‘particle of individual consciousness.” 

“Photography, a contemporary medium of light, has been in revolution since its inception. Even before it existed, the idea of it, the holder of light, was a radical departure from the way we saw ourselves and the world around us,” said Douglas.

Sun to Sun will be on show at Artereal for the month of September, beginning 3 September and running until 4 October 2014. 

The above video documents Simone Douglas' recent Artist Talk at Artereal Gallery. Special thanks to Veronica Habib for producing this video.

SEQUESTER / GALLERY @ EMBASSY OF AUSTRALIA IN WASHINGTON DC

Sequester_installation shot

Simone Douglas is currently exhibiting as part of a curated exhibition entitled Sequester, at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC.

The group exhibition showcases works from six Australian contemporary artists currently working out of New York City and London; featuring Simone Douglas, Patrick Foster & Jen Berean, Matthew Griffith, Christopher Hanrahan, and Rob McLeish.

"Alike science experiment these artists have been selected based upon an empirical set of rules. The artists all live and work outside of Australia and they have all in varying degrees worked as educators.

In building upon these basic facts the exhibition aligns the reductive tendencies of each artist’s practice - this manifesting itself aesthetically or conceptually in their various approaches to art making. In an act of sequestering, each artist has adopted a system of constraint to structure their experiments. The external material fed into these systems is drawn from the world around them. This manifests as an engagement with the landscape in the work of Simone Douglas and a wry approach to media in Matthew Griffin’s work. Pat Foster and Jen Berean establish a strict set of rules for an engagement with wider society though a critical approach to architecture and design. While Rob McLeish and Christopher Hanrahan question our perceptual and material understanding through transformations and process.

Through the collation of these artists and the juxtaposition of their methods, Sequester demonstrates the ability of artists to examine and elucidate the vast complexities of lived experience with a remarkable economy of means."

Sequester runs from 31 March to 6 June 2014.

Gallery @ Embassy of Australia - 1601 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington DC

SIMONE DOUGLAS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA...

Simone Douglas, Surrender (Collision) III, 2008, type c photograph, 45.9 x 64.0 cm

 Simone Douglas, Surrender (Collision) I , 2008, type c photograph, 47.8 x 66.0 cm

Simone Douglas is currently exhibiting two works, Surrender (Collision) I and III, as part of the "Light Works" exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria. The exhibition is curated by Isobel Crombie and also includes other works by Mike and Doug Starn, David Stephenson, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Bill Henson.

"The sun’s light is an elemental force of nature without which our planet would not exist. Light is also fundamental for the creation of photographs, indeed some of the first photographs were named ‘calotype’ meaning a ‘beautiful impression’ created by light. Light, and its absence, it still a source of inspiration for many contemporary photographers. Works included range from photograms (camera-less images); large scale installations and digital light-based technologies" - Isobel Crombie, Curator.

Simone Douglas's Surrender (Collision) I and III were purchased by the NGV in 2001.

The exhibition will run from 23 March - 16 September 2012 at the National Gallery of Victoria.

SIMONE DOUGLAS AND ANNE MACDONALD FINALISTS IN THE JOSEPHINE ULRICK AND WIN SCHUBERT PHOTOGRAPHY AWARD...

Anne MacDonald_Plush Rabbit (Cherish)

Simone Douglas_Ever III & Ever VII (diptych)

Congratulations to Simone Douglas and Anne MacDonald, both of whom are finalists in the 2012 Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Photography Award.

The winner of the $20,000 prize will be announced by this years guest judge,  Kon Gouriotis (Director, Australian Centre for Photography) on Saturday 31 March. The exhibition of finalists can be seen at the Gold Coast Art Gallery from 31 March - 13 May, 2012.

SIMONE DOUGLAS & ZHANG HONGKUAN IN 'UNDER THE WILLOW'...

                      

Zhang Hongkuan_Power Nest #9_2010

Simone Douglas and Zhang Hongkuan are currently included in Under the Willow: 3 years of the Willow Art Group and the works they didn't buy - a group show at Flinders Street Gallery which has been curated by Virginia Wilson.

"The Willow Art Group was established in early 2009 both as a way to support the grass-roots art scene and to give collectors the chance to purchase new work by innovative and exciting artists. There are 2 rules - no discussion of investment potential and no requests for discounts.

Over the last 12 months, I realised works overlooked by the group were worth a second look. I send images and information about artworks via email but sometimes what attracted me most to the work is lost in that process. This, coupled with the members of the Willow Art Group being incredibly busy, meant good works were slipping through. As a result, Under the Willow is anti-curated by the members of the group - it's the works they didn't buy." - Virginia Wilson, Art Consultant and Curator.

The exhibition includes work by artists such as: Stephanie Monteith, Ben Cauchi, Matt McWilliams, Paul Wells, Tori Ferguson, Simone Douglas, Sarah Newall, Jessica Maurer, Eliza Hutchison, Luis Martinez, Sherna Teperson and Eric Niebuhr.

The Photographic Universe: Simone Douglas in conversation with Michael T. Jones

The Total Archive

Simone Douglas with Michael T. Jones

The field of photography is constantly changing. What constitutes a "photographer" or a "photograph" has always been redefined by technological innovations. In the last two decades, the digital revolution and the Internet have enabled us to quickly develop new photographic processes, rapidly altering our definition of photography. One might even say that the present state of photography is similar to that of the time of its invention, when the form's emerging cultural significance swiftly expanded as a result of technological innovations. The Photographic Universe: A Conference reflects on this current moment, with the pervasive digitalization of the medium and its speedy permeation into contemporary life. Prominent thinkers and practitioners from a variety of artistic, scientific, cultural, and sociopolitical backgrounds discuss their role in the growing the field of photography, evaluate its increasingly blurry relationship between art and life, and speculate how photographic images will continue to change the way we see our world.

For more information, visit http://photographicuniverse.parsons.edu/

ARTCHAT - Simone Douglas in conversation with Thomas Robertson...

Simone Douglas in conversation with Thomas Robertson at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

In association with the Photography and Place and Art Express exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Isobel Philips on 'Photography and Place'...

Isobel Philips discusses the Art Gallery of New South Wales' current exhibition Photography and Place: approaches to Australian landscape photography 1970's till now on The Art Life website...

Simone Douglas_Blind IV _2000_

C Type Photograph_edition of 6_95 x 74cm

"Both Simone Douglas’s unfocused and blue tinted landscape series Blind and David Stephenson’s Antarctic ice-scapes – where the difference between land and sky is completely imperceptible – move into the realm of the transcendental. These works were fragile and profound in the very same instant.

The conceptual thread I had traced throughout the entire exhibition culminated in Douglas and Stephenson’s work. These works do not announce a constant or total landscape but whisper its delicate, fluctuating and intangible forms. As I see it, the whole exhibition works in and around this very premise. What matters here is not that which remains visible – that which shouts out at you from the centre of the image – but what is left unsaid, what is lost within the ellipsis." - (extract) Whispered Landscapes, Isobel Philips, The Art Life.

Simone Douglas Artist Talk

As part of Art Month Sydney 2011, Simone Douglas speaks about her latest series of works Ever. The Ever series can be seen at Artereal Gallery until the 2 April, 2011.

'Photography and Place' Exhibition Opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales...

Coinciding with her current solo exhibition Ever now showing at Artereal Gallery, Simone Douglas also has three works included in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' current exhibition Photography and Place: approaches to Australian landscape photography 1970's till now which runs until the 29 May 2011.

Curated by Judy Annear, the exhibition is an exploration of the idea of place, as seen in Australian landscape photography of the 1970s and more recent work.

Ilmar Leetberg, artist Simone Douglas and Artereal Gallery Director Luisa Catanzaro.

Arteral Gallery Curator Barbara Dowse, Simone Douglas and Luisa Catanzaro

Luisa in front of Simone's work...

Book Launch: 'Look: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980'

Join Anne Marsh for the launch of her new book, Look: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980, at Stills Gallery, 36 Gosbell Street, Paddington, on Thursday 17th March from 6-8pm.

Look!: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980 presents a significant survey of Australian photographers and is the largest book ever published on Australian contemporary photography.

Written by esteemed academic and art historian Anne Marsh, this large-format book, with over 400 colour plates showcases the work of 190 individual photographers and creates a critical forum through its accompanying essays which analyse the curatorial and theoretical issues that have shaped Australian photography over the last 30 years, accompanied by a timeline detailing important photographic exhibitions and events.

Featured artists include Artereal artists Simone Douglas and Shane Fitzgerald.

Simone Douglas at the Art Gallery of New South Wales...

Simone Douglas_Blind II_2000_C Type photograph

Coinciding with her current solo exhibition Ever now showing at Artereal Gallery, Simone Douglas will also have three works included in the Art Gallery of New South Wales' upcoming exhibition Photography and Place: approaches to Australian landscape photography 1970's till now which runs from 17 March - 29 May 2011.

Curated by Judy Annear, the exhibition is an exploration of the idea of place, as seen in Australian landscape photography of the 1970s and more recent work.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales describes the exhibition:

"Unlike politically and conceptually informed landscape photography in Australia in the 1970s, which was a tentative exploration of the idea of place and reclamation, some recent photographic work can be seen to explore the idea of place in dynamic relation to culture, despite the specificities of location.

This exhibition looks at the earlier work and compares and contrasts intention and effect in relation to more recent photography and examines works that present very specific views of locations and what that location or place can be taken to represent. Includes 18 artists from Jon Rhodes, Lynn Silverman, Simryn Gill, Ricky Maynard, Rosemary Laing to Paul Ogier."

ART MONTH SYDNEY

Simone Douglas_Ever II_2011

Art Month Sydney is officially upon us and as part of the month long contemporary arts festival Artereal is excited to present our March exhibition program. We hope you can join us on Thursday 10 March from 6-8pm for the opening of our Art Month exhibitions....

As part of Art Month Sydney, Ever, a series of photographs by New York based photo artist Simone Douglas will be showing in the main gallery from the 2 March - 2 April 2011.

The Ever series is an investigation of photography in relation to the sublime, excess, immateriality and the perceptual uncertainty of the photograph itself. Simone's images mark small events as potential acts of immensity. Crystalline cloudscapes and ice fissures form cryptic images of the forces of nature. The works are micro in scale yet macro in vision and concept. They play with the ambiguity of appearances and the contradiction between objective and subjective vision to explore the poetic dimension of photography.

As part of Art Month Sydney, Simone Douglas will be giving an artist's talk in the gallery on Saturday 12 March at 2.30pm.

Ken + Julia Yonetani_Ultrabuddha - that is why I want to be saved_2009

Also showing, during Art Month Sydney  (from the 2 March - 2 April 2011), Ken + Julia Yonetani will exhibit Ultrabuddha - that is why I want to be saved in the project space at Artereal Gallery. A ceramic and 23ct gold leaf sculpture will show alongside photographic images.

The ubiquitous Buddha statue, familiar as both a part of popular culture and of people’s quest for a healing power to ease the anxiety of contemporary living is linked by the Yonetani with Ultraman, the animated Japanese superhero.

The Yonetani’s creation, of Ultrabuddha is the incarnation of a complex contradiction; both embodying a spiritual quest for healing powers that may save ourselves and our planet, alongside the commercialisation and commodification of this quest within popular culture.

Sylvia Schwenk_In silence and movement you

can show the reflection of people_2011

 

Also happening as part of Art Month Sydney:

In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people,

Saturday 12 March 2011

1 pm – 1.30 pm

West Circular Quay in front of the MCA

A new work of participatory performance art conceived by internationally renowned intervention artist Sylvia Schwenk especially for Art Month 2011 will take place in front of the MCA construction site at Circular Quay.

Participants decked in yellow hard hats carrying real and notional transparent sheets of glass focus attention on the neglected and overlooked heroes of the everyday; the fixers and makers that glaze windows , mend our taps, change our tyres…

 

'Put up or Shut up'

New York based artists Simone Douglas and Aziz + Cucher will be showing work at the New York Academy of Art as part of a group exhibition Put up or Shut up. The exhibition presents the work of MFA graduate program faculty members working in the greater New York City area and runs from 10 February – 6 March 2011.

Participating institutions include Brooklyn College, Long Island University, Montclair State University, New Jersey City University, New York Academy of Art, New York University, Parsons/New School, Pratt Institute, Queens College, Rutgers, SUNY Purchase, SUNY Stony Brook and Tyler School of Art of Temple University.

For the esteemed artists who teach in these many MFA programs, serious art-making is required - maintaining a vigorous focus on an active studio practice is demanded. The goal of this inaugural faculty exhibition is to engage in the discourse between teacher and student, mentor and rising star, reflecting the challenges and growth presented to each as a result of their pedagogical relationship. The public – and the students -- may judge for themselves the output by these ever-evolving agents of influence and direction.

The exhibition was conceived by Catherine Howe, faculty member at the New York Academy of Art, and is scheduled to run concurrently with the 2011 College Art Association conference and the 7th CAA New York Area MFA Exhibition at Hunter College, an expansive survey of work from students in 20 institutions within a hundred-mile radius of New York City.

Look!: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980

Simone Douglas, Ever III & VII, 2010

Artereal artist Simone Douglas is included in a new book on Australian Contemporary Photography.

Look!: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980 presents a significant survey of Australian photographers and is the largest book ever published on Australian contemporary photography.

Written by esteemed academic and art historian Anne Marsh, this large-format book, with over 400 colour plates showcases the work of 190 individual photographers and creates a critical forum through its accompanying essays which analyse the curatorial and theoretical issues that have shaped Australian photography over the last 30 years, accompanied by a timeline detailing important photographic exhibitions and events.

Look!: Contemporary Australian Photography since 1980 will be available for sale from December 2010.

What is critique?

Artereal artist Simone Douglas,  will be speaking today at  New York's Parsons The New School for Design as part of What is Critique? an all day symposium that consists of panel discussions with artists, critics, teachers, and students city-wide that investigates the role that art critiques and criticism play in art production.

The first half of the day will focus on the nature and function of art critiques as a form criticism and pedagogy. The latter part of the day will be a panel discussion addressing the relationship between critical theory, art production and art reception. Participants include Jay Bernstein, Tom Butter, Chris Cutrone, Simone Douglas, James Elkins, Lydia Goehr, Gregg Horowitz, and more.