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BODYSCAPES

 

I describe my work as post post-object or if you prefer, post modern. It is eclectic, it borrows and repurposes digital images, either my own or images found within the digital domain of electronic social media. Initially I repurposed my own photographs to create Bodyscapes, that is, landscapes of the human body and the human condition. These evolve from my original studies in sculpture at Prahran CAE in 1978 where I worked in stone and wood, and with performance art. During these years my exposure to many artists, but particularly Man Ray and Bill Brandt’s enigmatic nudes in the landscape, developed my interest in form, light and texture to create surreal digital light paintings that exist as transient excitations of the phosphors of my computer screen. The pixelisations in the source images become the seeds for the image processing which creates myriads of interwoven light tubules that form at the end of the process into a semblance of the original collaged image. The elements of chance play heavily in this image seeding process so one cannot entirely predict what will be the eventual outcome.

 

My first solo exhibition of Giclee prints at the Photographers Gallery in Melbourne was sponsored by Epson in 2000 during the lead up to the Iraq War. They lacked the luminosity of the screen images but I was able to resolve this later on by creating animated video artworks that I could now add an audio narrative to the sequences of images. Having worked as an editor for a national current affairs TV program through the Gulf War, I was able to create a new visual and audio narrative in my work. Fully aware of the propaganda tools used by the mass media, my work makes comment of the jingoism and bias being broadcast nightly into our homes. Images titled Homeland Security, Coalition of the Willing and Collateral Damage (found on my websites) play heavily with subliminal messaging and semiotics. They are surreal images that are often perceived differently by each member of an audience, in one work titled Waiting for Nesara, one woman saw death and decay but another saw life and imminent birth. From my original studies as a biologist and later as an educator, I have always maintained an interest in psychology, perception and the natural world.

 

It was not until the development of affordable digital cameras and Adobe image editing software more than two decades ago, that I was able to have the Germination of an Idea to transition my conventional photography, which had followed after my studies with Athol Shmith, John Cato and Paul Cox at Prahran, into the Bodyscape format that I use today. Balance is a photo taken during a sculpture camp with John Davis, The Ball was captured a decade later in Holland. Some of the early Bodyscapes that evolved from conventional nudes include Pillar of Salt, Glare and Pride With Prejudice.

 

My work is political art either exploring the body politic, social politics or governmental politics. In 2006 I developed a series of work titled Thirteen: Portrait of a Teenager from repurposed photos taken by my 13 year old stepdaughter of her own body, for example Kiss. These were innocent private photos by a child coming into self-awareness of her body as an emerging teenager. Three years later, recognising what her images meant, we held a solo exhibition of her photos and my digital imaging at Uniting Arts Toorak complete with the publication of a book. The opening speech was presented by a female reverend of the Uniting Church and Sir Robert Menzies’ son was a member of the gallery board of directors. Copies of the book found its way into all the state and national libraries, but then came the Henson affair where Sydney artist Bill Henson was harangued by the police, media and federal politicians for photographing semi-naked teenagers. The backlash I felt was the removal of my book from the shelves of the National Library in Canberra and the demand that I refund them the purchase price. When I challenged the chief librarian about censorship, the lame excuse offered was that they were overstocked. Several years later my book that was in the NLA legal deposit was placed on the library shelves.

 

As a result of the now all pervasive prudery and political correctness that swept through the Australian art world, I stopped working with models and began to focus on world current affairs examining the social eccentricity and dark underbelly of humanity. Challenging the Goliath, Children Overboard and The Cost referenced a new direction that became increasingly political. Two new series of work titled Children of War and Snapshots of Suburbia evolved into many hundreds of artworks that were exhibited both internationally and to a lesser extent locally. Some of these were published in book form and in magazines. When the global financial crisis rocked the world in 2009-10 I produced a video artwork titled When I Grow Up. The work portrayed how the world was via a series of animated artworks with current news media grabs as a narrative, this was counterbalanced by a series of interviews by young children expressing positively how the world will be when they grow up. One 8 year old expressed that “When I grow up all the greedy, selfish, rich people will be sent to Mars to live on bread and water”. This work was exhibited in 35 countries including Russia, China and Iran, and won multiple awards in Spain and Germany. It was followed up by two similar format videos titled Conspiracy and Where Do We Go When We Die?

 

Having been a teacher at university, Tafe, secondary and primary school levels I have always worked collaboratively with young people. More recently, having also played the role of a parent, my work has evolved into a critique of current tendencies in society that I perceive as a threat to the healthy development of children. The worrying slide towards totalitarian governments worldwide has become fuel for a new series of artworks titled Who’s Watching Who Watch Who. These works focus on the new trend of public live video streaming on social network websites but also reference the increasing tendency of governments to public and private surveillance of our lives, recently exampled by the incredulous arrest of a pregnant young woman, in her pyjamas in her home, for posting a comment on her Facebook page.

 

While that event was during the CoVid lockdown in Victoria, I also have concerns that children as young as six are being given unsupervised access to smart phones with live video streaming capabilities by doting parents. While in the most part this leads to innocent documents of dance and play in lounge rooms and bedrooms as seen on Apps like TikTok and Likee, there is much more to be concerned about, apart from high EMF exposure, for example the work After School, Selfie Love Me and The Narcissist. Psychologically this open and easy access to the internet is gendering new levels of voyeurism and narcissism previously only seen in older adolescents. Very young children are playing out role models as they see in the mass media because social media apps reward them for the number of likes they get. During the recent virus pandemic lockdowns, live streaming and zoom conferencing exploded exponentially replacing our normal daily social contacts at work and at school. This is a massive social engineering experiment that has worrying consequences for the future. Social isolation and people programmed to wear masks have led to the development of an App that superimposes a digital mask over the face of the broadcaster. Corona Daze is a deliberately haunting work with a Mona Lisa like gaze that reflects the loneliness of a teenager in her bedroom communicating with her peers via her phone.    

 

As our technocratic society evolves it also exposes its dark underbelly to search engines like duckduckgo. In Juvie, Julian, An Inconvenient Truth, Red Sock in the Wash, New School, Block Kids and The Tunnel are works, among a hundred others, that reflect aspects of our society that many people find difficult to contemplate, like the work of respected friend George Gittoes. I remember a comment I heard from a couple viewing Children Overboard at an art auction held by the Brigadine nuns to raise funds for the refugee detainees in Australia. They loved the artwork but felt the truth of the subject matter was too dark and unsettling to hang on their lounge room wall. Prime Minister Howard lied to the public that boat refugees were throwing their children overboard to be rescued by the Australian Navy, this was to turn public sympathy away from refugees seeking asylum in Australia. In these unsettling polarizing times where ever-more public revelations expose the ugliness of the world, it also exposes the love and beauty that I also seek to show. Pool and Just Hanging are playful works while Gassed, Don’t Frack, Once There Were Trees and The Last Protestor document how a rural community came together in love and harmony to stand down a mining company and the government when threatened by coal seam gas mining.

 

My artwork borrows from the social realists of the prewar 1930’s, I document life as I see it in a time of immense change. Being both digital and political it has not seen favour with Australian and American critics, curators and public galleries.  But in Europe I find a large audience who embrace content that encourages contemplation and debate. As an artist I seek truth and beauty in my art as I perceive it, I don’t make pretty pictures, if it offends you then that is your problem not mine, everyone sees with a different eye and a different mind. Therein lies the value of art.

 

 

Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/neilbs01/videos

Video artworks: https://vimeo.com/user4513931

When I Grow Up: https://vimeo.com/14257134

Conspiracy: https://vimeo.com/51418690

 

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THIRTEEN: PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGER

Exhibition Opening Speech by Rev. Anneke Oppewal

Kinross House, Uniting Arts Toorak, June 29th to July 29th, 2006.

 

Look how beautiful you are! Flicking through the book Neil has put together with the pictures and bodyscapes he created from those pictures that was the thought that hit me first. A beautiful girl, at a beautiful age looking at herself, discovering herself, growing body awareness, growing confidence in who she is and what she looks like. Me being a minister, I could not but connect that back to a Bible story. I thought of the Garden of Eden, pictured in the Bible as a place where people lived in innocent happiness, unaware of their nakedness, their vulnerability, of the dangerous and terrible world that was out there. Jewish interpretation sees that part of the story as the equivalent of childhood. We grow up, in our families, and if all is right we are protected, cherished and nourished, and mainly unaware of some of the more nasty things that can be out there.

 

Until there is a moment where it is time to cut the apron strings and venture out on our own, and discover the world outside that safe and blissful place. We start to perceive ourselves as a separate entity that could do things differently, could be different from the environment we grew up in, and we become aware of who we are, what we look like, what we desire for ourselves in our own right, and in our own way. That's where the mobile phone cameras come out and the mirrors appear on every wall, especially with the female of the species. We start looking at our reflection in shop windows, we hesitate before a mirror, and we begin to notice the little imperfections here and there, and appreciate the parts that are good and attractive about our bodies.

 

We become self aware, and we start to carve out our own path, and travel our own journey through the world, and we start to experiment with and discover things that were previously outside our experience. In the story of Genesis Two that is where reality starts to hit: Not all of what is out there is good, not all of what is out there will be positive and wholesome. Some in fact, can be pretty nasty. I think what Neil has done with those beautiful pictures has captured that moment of truth. Where self-awareness and realisation of being a separate entity starts to dawn, and the big wide world opens up. Here am I, this is me, I am beautiful, I am a person in my own right with my own funny little thingies, twists and turns, and I am ready to venture out and be me outside of the safety of home.

 

When we talked about the exhibition, Neil and I talked about the anxieties that go with that. For parents as well as their teenagers. Suddenly there seems to be so much out there that could harm and do damage to that innocent beauty captured in the pictures. Suddenly memories come flooding back and we might feel the world was such a much safer place when we were growing up. I am sure that is only a matter of perspective by the way. My parents were as daunted by drugs and sex back in the seventies as I am now with my children entering teenager-dom. And I was as naive about them as most teenagers would be now. When you are that age it simply doesn't feel like anything could ever do any serious harm to you.

 

Neil's exhibition is about all that and more. It is a political statement about the world teenagers are growing up in. A world where there is a lot that is interfering with that growth in self-awareness and self-appreciation; a lot that could interfere with a positive body image and an innocent appreciation of who and what we are. The sexualization of body, the peer pressures that are around, the body imagery that is promoted by girls magazines, a lot of that isn't helpful when you're 13 and looking to grow into a healthy and strong woman. But it is also a moving statement of beauty, of looking at perfection as it comes out through the camera of a 13 year old, and taking those images further into bodyscapes which take the pictures to another level where art communicates some of the more profound truths and insights of  life.

 

And last but not least there is a statement here about the spiritual aspect of being thirteen, of growing into a person in your own right, of coming to the point where, what you are and what God has intended you to be, is starting to show and to bloom like a flower opening itself up. It is all there and I thank Neil and Jessica for making those beautiful images available to us.

Anneke Oppewal, Minister Uniting Church of Toorak, July 1st 2006.

 

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