SALA SOLO 2023-24
We’ve been long term sponsors of the South Australian Living Artists (SALA) Festival, initially our sponsorship was a simple prize for our services to the winning photographic exhibition. But all along I’ve wanted to offer a more meaningful prize.
In 2021-2022 two other SALA sponsors joined me in an idea to mentor and stage a show from a winning proposal. The other sponsors were Patty Chehade from Praxis Artspace and Gavin Blake from the Centre for Creative Photography.
The prize, or opportunity as it is called, involves Gavin’s mentoring and curation skills, our production and Patty’s gallery space during the festival. The winning artist gets to see a lot of us!
In 2022 we awarded the inaugural SALA SOLO prize to David Hume, his show “Fleurieu, Perceptions of Place” opened in August 2023. It was a success, not only David’s show, but the prize itself.
In 2023, we awarded the prize to Yasemin Sabuncu, a multi disciplinary artist who proposed a show based around self image and life as an online person.
Over the year leading up to this 2024 SALA Festival, we met Yasemin and helped refine her show plans. Scheduling difficulties between Gavin and Yasemin early in 2024 put a bit of pressure on all of us, and as it got closer to production time, the show was rapidly pulled together.
Yasemin’s works were all printed as pigment prints on an archival lustre paper, then mounted on gator board. The lustre was chosen to echo the familiar traditional photographs look.
Yasemin decided to use iPhone selfies as the basis for the imagery, it was the perfect medium for the message. All of the pictures were taken in her darkened bedroom, illuminated only by the screen showing the picture about to be taken, as it does in the front facing camera mode.
The image processing chip on her phone conjured up some amazing results. In many images, the guesswork made by the phone, added mesmerising glitches and noise as it sought to do it’s job of making a ‘nice’ picture. The images are a masterful collaboration between the 50 years of digital camera development, and Yasemin’s ideas.
The design of the Praxis’s gallery space engaged visitors in a unique way. At one end was a darkened room, where you enter carrying your phone as a torch, the viewer illuminated some of the selfies printed and hung on the walls at seemingly random sizes and locations, this was called the discovery room. It was like being inside Yasemin’s dreams.
Outside this room was a large projection of an infinite scrolling session, something we are all capable of. The images being viewed were more selfies. It spoke of the search for that perfect picture. Below the projection were some items from her bedside table, a device to anchor the setting.
Next came some stunning three meter vertical strips of collections of similar images, or the same image with slight variations. These were a hint to the work Edward Muybridge, who was the father of motion picture and the ‘bullet time’ techniques of the movie “The Matrix”. These suggested a further refining of the endless scroll of images to find that perfect picture.
Lastly, at the other end of the gallery was a single portrait hanging in a quiet, beautifully decorated space, with inviting cushions on the floor. This cultural enclave, had a temple like quality, and begged the viewer to come and sit with others. Yasemin, as a child of Turkish migrants, structured this space in a traditional way, celebrating her heritage.
The kicker was, to see this portrait, and participate in that space, you had to turn your back on the rest of the show. Turn your back on the endless scrolling, the endless chase for that perfect image.
What a clever show. Well done Yasemin. Well done team!
I interviewed Yasemin for our podcast, you listen to that episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2342805/15770883
