An Interview with Henry Bateman

Dennis Rito, the man behind the Philippine Photography Scene blog put me though a third degree after the Pixel Perfect exhibition opening. The result of his interrogation can be seen here.

A Master of Modern Photography

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Andreas Gursky F1 Pit Stop I, 2007, © Andreas Gursky / SODRAC (2009)

German photographer Andreas Gursky is having a retrospective of his work at the Vancouver Art Gallery. And as part of the publicity for the event FOTO8 have published Guy Lane’s interview with him.

Read the interview and see more Gursky pics here.

Is Art Self Abuse?

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The Guardian on line has a review of British artist Tracy Emin’s latest show at the White Cube Gallery, “Those Who Suffer Love”. Peter Conrad does the honours, you can read "Confessions of a saucy seamstress" here, and although snarky from time to time he does raise an this idea at the end of his piece.

“Perhaps Emin is at last admitting that art, at least for her, is a species of self-abuse.” Thinking about the nature of art as opposed to picture making it could be strongly contended that Emin is not alone. Even when the work is not as graphically sexual as Emin’s the process of the artist bearing their inner most thoughts and feelings is said to be the hallmark of great art. (Consider Bacon, consider Goodwin)

In the words of Ed Winkleman, “consider this an open thread” and add your two bob’s worth.

A Good Day to be an Aussie in the Philippines

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It’s a good day to be an Aussie/Filipino, my home country and my adopted country both picked up gongs at Cannes.

First time director Warwick Thornton got the Palme d’Or for best first film for his love story “Samson and Delilah” and Brillante Mendoza picked up the directors Palme d’Or for his crime movie “Kinatay”.

The Filipino’s grisly tale of a kidnap-rape victim who is beaten up before being murdered and hacked to pieces in “Kinatay” nudged out heavy weight directors like Quentin Tarantino and Jane Campion to get the nod from the International Film Festival’s judges. These same judges said that the slow, shy courtship of the young petrol sniffing boy and the girl caring for her aged grandmother in “Samson and Delilah” was the best love story they had seen in many years.

Now the tricky bit will be to find a cinema that will show these films in preference to the standard Hollywood fare.

To find out about all the Cannes winners go here