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EXHIBITIONS 2009 |
| Peter Milne: Brief Shining Moment |
20 May – 5 July 2009 (Handbury + Mann Galleries) |
Australian photomedia artist Peter Milne continues to pursue his interest in the construction and consumption of history in his latest exhibition Brief Shining Moment. Composed of six separate but related suites of photographs, Brief Shining Moment focuses on some of the key players and episodes from the highly charged “Whitlam era” of Australian politics.
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In the series, A Kind of Love, Milne presents the tale of Jim Cairns, the then Treasurer and former Moratorium hero who was accused of having an affair with his exotic assistant Juni Morosi. The seductive colour images in this series borrow from television soap opera as they re-tell the turbulent story that was histrionically played out in the Australian media at the time. In Make Straight the Way, he restages actual photographs from the Flinders University’s ‘Dunstan Collection’ (bequeathed by former South Australian Premier Don Dunstan). The images capture glimpses from a very flamboyant life, lived in the full glare of the ‘Photo Opportunity’.
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Other series include the stories of the tragi-comic Governor General, Sir John Kerr and the two media moguls – Packer and Murdoch, who played an integral role in the myth-making and breaking during this extraordinary period in our (recent) history. Brief Shining Moment is a kind of visual ‘mythopoeia’. It is an attempt to create mythic narrative out of ‘factual’ history and in doing so, highlight the ways in which history and myth both operate as ‘cautionary tales’ to articulate societal values and guide moral behaviour. The narratives are operatic, fuelled by human dynamics of loyalty, hubristic ambition, envy and betrayal. Throughout the work there runs a central motif of futile idealism and of grand utopian dreams frustrated, foiled, diluted and corrupted. |
Brief Shining Moment is intended to be a series of morality tales, more emotional than evidentiary. Like the actual historical events and documents it interprets, it is supposed to be comically improbable (and perhaps also a little sad). Curated by Helen Frajman of M33 Photoagency. |
Image: Peter MILNE, Press Conference, Canberra from the series A Kind of Love - The Ballard of Jim and Juni, 2007 giclee print © Reproduced courtesy of the artist / M.33 |
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