Lauren Hewitt’s Familiar Fable exhibition takes local streetscapes and turns them into haunting scenes. One is left pondering what dark deeds are going on behind the gates and just beyond the windows, who has just passed over the streets, where they were going and why.
My favourite piece of Hewitt’s work is not displayed in this exhibition. It is a dark shot looking down a street at night. In the distance an old driveway gate hints at a derelict property local kids might tell stories about. My pick of the exhibition is a piece of road, shot with very short depth of field. There might be a chalk outline beyond the focal point, there might not. Bogart would be right at home in Hewitt’s noctural world.
July 23th 6pm : August 9th 4pm, 2009 : Familiar Fable at Photoaccess, cnr Manuka Circle and New South Wales Crescent, Manuka, CanberraA photographic exhibition by Lauren Hewitt.
Familiar Fable is Lauren Hewitt’s first solo exhibition, and her second exhibition in the HUW DAVIES GALLERY at PhotoAccess. In February–March 2005 Hewitt and Madeleine Donovan, PhotoAccess artists in residence under the ANU School of Art’s Emerging Artists Support Scheme, presented Latent—the first exhibition shown in the redeveloped HUW DAVIES GALLERY. In my catalogue introduction I wrote:
‘Lauren Hewitt had an earlier association with PhotoAccess as a diploma course student in 1998. Under the Mango Tree and Airmail, the work she presented in the ANU School of Art graduating show five years later, testified eloquently and beautifully to the success of her journey from craft to art. In Latent her interest in visually beautiful images persists, but there are also images suggesting mysterious goings on in dark gardens and other inhabited but unpeopled places. Drama laden night scenes—an unseen observer peering at light filled windows, peculiar shapes corralled by a backyard Hills hoist—contrast with atmospheric, exquisitely defined bare branches and wispy clouds threaded against many coloured skies.
Lauren Hewitt’s work is introspective, touching on the deep personal emotions most of us feel but can’t or won’t voice. The images in this exhibition evoke feelings of wistful contemplation, love of the small and the grand things in nature, and agonising loneliness’.
Familiar Fable continues Hewitt’s exploration of ordinary places suggesting real or imagined narratives. But this work moves into the streets, laneways and roads that are part of the world we share as a community. Hewitt says in her Artist Statement that she has attempted to ‘… explore the way the local landscape is represented in the imagination. Capturing locations where sometimes something has occurred, an event, or where there is a hint of a happening, and locations that harbour that potential’.
Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald of 4 July 2009, John McDonald reflected on two recent shows of new media art, including Shaun Gladwell’s Australian Pavilion work at this year’s Venice Biennale. The work received the ‘Worst in Show’ award from New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz. McDonald observed that:
‘Standing in front of a work it should become pretty clear, pretty quickly, whether it captures one’s attention or not. If we are not amused or entertained, we may rightfully pronounce the piece a failure. This idea will horrify art snobs, who see boredom and obfuscation as the hallmarks of high seriousness … ‘
Lauren Hewitt’s work responds to places in a way that captures our attention and entertains our imagination. Her images are precisely drawn, dramatically lit by street and building lights or the last light of the day; dark areas are as meaning laden as the areas elucidated by light. The images demonstrate strong compositional skills that help organise spare visual elements into satisfying, powerful and evocative works.
Lauren Hewitt has made thoughtful, significant contributions to exhibitions at PhotoAccess over a number of years. A 2009 PhotoAccess residency assisted with the development of Familiar Fable, her first solo exhibition, in the HUW DAVIES GALLERY at the Manuka Arts Centre.
David Chalker
Artist Statement
Landscape, memory, construction, tangible, intangible, the familiar, the unfamiliar, lost, found, looking…
The landscape provokes imagination, rumour, fable.
This body of work attempts to explore the way the local landscape is represented in the imagination. Capturing locations where sometimes something has occurred, an event, or where there is a hint of a happening, and locations that harbour that potential.
Drawing from the traditions of film noir, the familiar scene becomes the unfamiliar. Suburbia, seen from the car window, what we see everyday passes through our awareness, becoming swiftly invisible and unnoticed. Yet glimpses of these shadowed corners can spark the imagination for a fleeting moment, causing the birth of a brief fable, shortly lived, yet lingering.
I find that the urban landscape at night suddenly becomes a lot more interesting, and open to interpretation than during our everyday passings in the light hours. Trying to capture detail in the darkness, subtleties of shadow and low light for atmospheric scenery that easily impels the imagination. Working in the dark, at night, in obscure places is key to the process. It heightens the senses and the imagination, instils a sense of urgency and vulnerability.
The landscapes I shoot are not grand. I prefer a subtler scale, exploring how our history and memory inform our responses to the places we inhabit. We often do not choose our broader surroundings, they occur as a consequence to the places in which we choose to dwell.
Lauren Hewitt
[...] exhibition, Familiar Fable, closes next Sunday. Get to PhotoAccess and see it this [...]