PHOTO – RETRO by George Schwarz

George Schwarz’s oeuvre goes beyond the genre of autobiography to touch on universal themes of human experience- sex, death, and the unconscious.

© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz

Schwarz’s PHOTO-RETRO exhibition challenges prevailing canons and histories of Australian photography. Shown as a collection spanning over four decades, Schwarz’s images operate as vehicles across the structures of time and memory. They resonate with sensuality, pathos, and humour.

Often at odds to prevailing tastes, Schwarz captures images in colour with painterly complex compositions with a rich archaeological content. The collage of objects and unexpected amalgamations of visual influences create surreal layers of meaning, blurring the line between the real and symbolic, life and art.

© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz

“I would like you to absorb these images the same ways as you might listen in a concert, giving ourselves to the sounds and images it creates before us. Experiences, emotions and sensations (are) seldom used or half remembered. Let the images work on you.” – George Schwarz, May 2017

Opening night- 22 June, 6–8pm
Gallery times  Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
© George Schwarz
  

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November

Sydney: The exhibition delves into the State Library of NSW's vast collection of two million images, showcasing 400 photos – many displayed for the first time.

February

Melbourne: Jill Orr’s The Promised Land Refigured is an exhibition that reworks the original project created in 2012 with new insights that have emerged in the past eleven years.

March

Melbourne: Environmental Futures features five artists whose work addresses how the natural world is affected by climate change and encompasses photography, sculpture and installation both within the gallery spaces and around the museum grounds.

Ballarat: Nan Goldin is an American artist whose work explores subcultures, moments of intimacy, the impacts of the HIV/AIDS and opioid epidemics on her communities, and photography as a tool for social activism.

Sydney: The Ocean Photographer of the Year Award, run by London based Oceanographic Magazine is in its 4th year and has quickly achieved recognition amongst photographers around the world.

Albury: The National Photography Prize offers a $30,000 acquisitive prize, the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Fellowship for an emerging practitioner, and further supports a number of artists through focused acquisitions.

April

Sydney: Photographers Harold David, Lyndal Irons, Ladstreet, Selina Ou, David Porter, Greg Semu, and Craig Walsh exhibit a diverse and varied snapshot of Penrith and western Sydney as it has changed and grown over the last sixty years.

The City Surveyor’s ‘Condemnation and Demolition Books’ is a key photographic collection held in the City Archives comprising almost 5000 photographs and associated glass plate negatives.

May

Ballarat: Art Gallery of Ballarat presents Lost in Palm Springs, a multidisciplinary exhibition that brings together fourteen creative minds who respond to, capture, or re-imagine the magical qualities of the landscape and the celebrated mid-century modern architecture of Palm Springs, California and across Australia.