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Touring in 2006-07, 'Compact Prints' showcases contemporary works in a compact CD size that encompasses traditional and technological printmaking methods. A touring show from Umbrella Studios in Townsville, 'Compact Prints' displays the works of 124 national and international artists. There was no specific theme or restriction other than size and artists submitted two 12x12cm prints from the same edition; one displayed in CD cases for exghibition, and the other for exchanging among the participating artists.
When: Showing 5 - 22 . Opening night Fri 7 Sept. Where: Wood Street Gallery. Darwin.
In May of 1965 these strands of communal exploration and cultural paradigm shift came together in the settlement that turned the corner, that can plausibly be called the first full-blown hippie commune: Drop City, located near Trinidad, Colorado. Drop City brought together most of the themes of its predecessor communities--anarchy, pacifism, sexual freedom, drugs, open membership, art--and wrapped them in an exuberance and an architecture that trumpeted the coming of a new communal era.
Drop City's founders were influenced by a number of communal and collective traditions. One was of Mennonite stock and thus familiar with the close-knit, world-rejecting search for community conducted by the Anabaptists. Two were from leftist families in New York, raised with the collective ideals of Marxism was all about them. All three were artists and familiar with the concept of bohemian artists' collectives. The fourth person to settle at Drop City, and the one who lived there the longest of anyone, was raised by parents who had lived in the Jewish colonies of southern New Jersey.
The immediate impetus for Drop City, however, was art. Clark Richert met Gene and Jo Ann Bernofsky in 1961 in Lawrence, Kansas, where Richert and Jo Ann were studying painting and Gene was pursuing his own artistry, especially film. A year or two later Richert and Gene began creating what they called Drop Art, which began when they painted rocks and dropped them from a loft window onto the sidewalk on town's main drag, watching the reactions of passersby. From there the genre became more elaborate.
By 1965 Richert and the Bernofskys found themselves trying to escape the system altogether by pursuing a communal alternative. They wanted to find land, build houses, and live rent free while doing art. Richert and Gene Bernofsky found six acres of scrubby goat pasture outside Trinidad and bought it for $450 on May 3, 1965. There was never a question about the name; Drop City would be the communal settlement of the Drop artists. (Accounts in years to come would say that the commune's name stemmed from the fact that its members were dropouts, or from their liking to drop acid; they were simply wrong.)
The three Droppers moved in immediately. Shortly before the land purchase Richert had attended a lecture by Buckminster Fuller in Boulder and come away with visions of geodesic domes. With only the vaguest ideas of what they were doing they began to build. Without money--Drop City was always broke--they had to scrounge building materials; they planted old telephone poles for foundation piles and collected mill ends, pieces of 2x4 too short to sell, from a lumber mill scrap pile. Amazingly, two domes were soon erected, and a big third one was begun.
Before the third dome's outer covering was started in the spring of 1966, Steve Baer, an established dome-builder from Albuquerque, had begun to visit the Droppers. Baer startled junkyard owners by walking in and offering them a nickel or a dime apiece for car tops; then he and the Droppers would take big double-bladed axes and chop the tops from the cars. Attached to the facets of the domes, they produced a hamlet of crazy quilts.
The Droppers had the kind of visionary optimism that would soon characterize the entire hippie movement. Jo Ann Bernofsky says, "We knew that we wanted to do something outrageous and we knew we wanted to do it with other people, because it was more exciting to be with a group than to be just one or two or three people. . . . It was full of vitality, and it was extremely exciting and wonderful. You had the sense that anything was possible." They also had the beat-hippie disdain for money, material comfort, and work. As Gene Bernofsky puts it,
It's important to be employed; work is important, but we felt that to be gainfully employed was a sucking of the soul and that a part of one of the purposes of the new civilization was to be employed, but not to be gainfully employed, so that each individual would be their own master and we idealistically believed that if we were true to that principle, that if we did nongainful work that the cosmic forces would take note of this and would supply us with the necessities of survival.
Living on a few donations, and, briefly, food stamps, the Droppers pursued their art vigorously. Slides taken during the first year show dozens of paintings, sculptures, pieces of decorated furniture, and assemblages, as well as the monumental artworks, the domes themselves. One innovative piece was The Being Bag, a hand- made black-and-white comic book cooperatively written and illustrated; it would be a strong contender for the title of first underground comic book. Gene Bernofsky also shot a great deal of film at Drop City. Literature was produced at the commune as well; the most prominent writer was Peter Douthit, who arrived a year after the founding. Under his Dropper name Peter Rabbit he published a book entitled Drop City, a mix of factual history, fiction, and prose poetry which, despite its limitations as a historical document, remains the most substantial work to date on the community.
There was much that was good about Drop City. Richert remembers it as the best part of his life. The Bernofskys talk of it with considerable pride. But eventually the edges began to fray, and Drop City began a long slide toward oblivion, finally closing in 1973. Before that, however, it helped inspire a whole new generation of communitarians, thanks to visits by thousands of hippies who dropped in, illustrated feature stories in both underground and mainstream publications, and the occasional presence of countercultural celebrities, Timothy Leary and perhaps Bob Dylan among them. Drop City had raised the flag of the city in the wilderness and became a defiant center of rejection of the culture of Babylon.
Extraordinary Child Photographs by Mary Ellen Mark September 9th 2007 - January 27th 2008
National Museum of Iceland Suourgata 41 - 101 Reykjavík
On September the 9th the exhibition Extraordinary Child will open at the National Museum of Iceland. The exhibition consists of 70 photographs by the renowned photographer Mary Ellen Mark and a documentary film by the Oscar nominated director Martin Bell. During the last two years they have been working on this project that focuses on the lives of disabled children in Iceland.
Mary Ellen Mark is known for taking photographs that reflect reality. Amongst her best-known projects are photographs of the lives of homeless youths in Seattle, followed by the documentary film Streetwise by Martin Bell, the work performed at Mother Teresa's charity mission in Calcutta, brothels in Bombay, and the Indian Circus.
The National Museum of Iceland places emphasis on reflecting the diverse facets of Icelands history and society. An important part of the museum's work is to offer exhibitions that move the spectator and cause him or her to reflect on the diversity of human experience and our circumstances in the present, as well as in the past. Contemporary documentation of our culture is of vital importance in that work.
Mary Ellen Mark's photographs in the exhibition Extraordinary Child were taken at Öskjuhlíoarskóli and Safamyrarskóli schools and the Lyngás centre for the disabled, in the fall and winter of 2006-2007. The Öskjuhlíoarskóli school is mostly for higher functioning children, while the Safamyrarskóli school is for more severely affected children. Mary Ellen got the change to follow the children to the different classes the schools offer, ranging from music to swimming. Mary Ellen was deeply affected by the atmosphere in the schools and she describes her experience during the seven weeks she spent with these extraordinary children as a time of enlightenment and hope.
The film by Martin Bell is titled Alexander: Extraordinary Child, focusing on Alexander Vioar Pálsson a severely disabled boy and his relationship with his parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, fellow students at Öskjuhlíoarskóli and even his dog; Rocky. The film offers a personal and intimate view of Alexander's daily life.
The exhibition also sheds light on the children's school environment through the photographs of Ívar Brynjólfsson, a photographer for the National Museum. Selected artwork by the school's pupils is also on display, chosen by Ingibjörg Jóhannsdóttir, principal of the Reykjavík School of Visual Art.
A bilingual, English and Icelandic, book will be produced in connection with the exhibition. All the photographs will be included along with an essay by journalist and photographer Einar Falur Ingólfsson about the lives of the children and the work of photographer Mary Ellen Mark. Mary Ellen Mark has written an introduction and foreword is written by Margrét Hallgrímsdóttir director of the National Museum.
This exhibition and film allow us to look into the eyes of the children and their circumstances with the help of the lens. At the same time we are also directing our gaze at our own perceptions and feelings. In this exhibition we see the reality of disabled children in our contemporary society. We sense how extraordinary these children, like all children, are.
Mary Ellen Mark says that in her life as a photographer it is very rare to be given such a remarkable opportunity to make photographs. She continues "Extraordinary Child is the kind of project that brought me to photography. I hope that after seeing the film and book, the audience will have a more intimate way of seeing children with disabilities because they are truly extraordinary." http://www.thjodminjasafn.is/english/temporary-exhibitions
