quartz abstraction #11

Whilst on the early  morning poodlewalk with Maya  along the littoral zone of the coastal rocks on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula I started scoping for a possible 5x4 photo session. As  Maya is now starting to hang around me whilist  I spend time photographing I reckoned it would be possible to use a 5x4 with a dark cloth. 

This is what I came up with today --- a close up, or macro view,  of an isolated rock with a quartz vein:

I had photographed the rock a few days earlier from a broader perspective.  

Quartz abstraction #9

This quartz abstraction was made recently on  an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko. The walk was along  the coast in Waitpinga, on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula South Australia.  

During early autumn it has  been cloudy in the morning and , clearing around midday and sunny in the afternoon. It has been a while since  we have done this  pm walk as the afternoon light has been too bright around 5-6pm. I was fortunate on this occasion. There  was afternoon cloud. 


quartz abstract #8

I was taken by the soft colours of the quartz vein amongst the coastal granite rocks  in the soft afternoon light:

Wirth summer just around the corner this part of the coast is still in sunlight between 5-6pm when I am on a poodlewalk. It is only rarely that there is cloud cover at this time of the day. This was one of those occasions.  

foam abstract #3

This picture is part of an ongoing  series  that depends on certain weather conditions along the littoral zone.  

 It was made on a poodlewalk during a a wild storm event. The tide was high, the  wind was  gusty and strong, and the waves were very high. It was quite dangerous making my way around the rocks west of Petrel Cove. We--Maleko and myself--- had to proceed with great caution.  

I made a video of the surging waves  using  my iPhone 6 whilst on this afternoon walk. The waves swirled around my feet as I sat on a rock making the video. 

quartz abstraction #6 + real abstractions

From this  low-fi blog  in a minor  photographic key a proposed online abstraction exhibition at  Encounters Gallery has emerged that explores the contemporary nature of abstraction as opposed to the art historical one that sees abstraction as an  modernist style of the 20th century.  It is seen as outmoded--a   pure” form or aesthetic form(s) that transcends historical and social influence that ran out of steam in the 1970s.  Abstraction is  locked into an historical dead end.

This art historical account still remains the dominant interpretation of (painterly) abstraction and so it appears to be  very odd to speak of abstraction and politics,   abstraction and culture, abstraction and gender or abstraction and race.     

What has emerged from the blog is a proposed online abstraction exhibition at  Encounters Gallery.This exhibition on abstraction photography includes some of my photos as well as possibly those of  two colleagues, namely Beverley  Southcott and Adam Dutkiewicz. We have exhibited together before,  and Adam and I have published a book with Moon Arrow Press   on abstract photography in 2016. 

red abstraction

The background and the context of this digital abstraction  can be found in this post on the Encounter Studio  photo blog. The image, which   is another fragment in the abstraction series, delights in colour. 

A digital image  poses a problem:  Is the  digital work  its file, encoded and encrypted and clearly mathematical, or is it  a fulfilled, material expression of that file?  Or is it both of these? The key is the integration of  photography into the network milieu with the emergence of new practices for circulating and archiving everyday images (eg., on Flickr). The  makes the photograph's   condition one in which the image increasingly functions as a form of data regulated by statistical/algorithmical processes.

sea abstract #5

Another image  in the sea abstraction series that emerges from  my daily walks along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula: 

This  was made in the summer of 2018 whilst on an afternoon  poodlewalk with Maleko. I recall that I got very wet as  a large wave swept over my  feet and legs. 

Below  is the converted black and white version of the digital file:

There is not that much difference between these two interpretations. 

As can be seen from the earlier images in this series---- hereherehere and here--- I   do struggle with this series. Their emergence from my daily walks indicates that  these  abstractions reject the common  view that  abstraction is a withdrawal from the modern world, almost a safe house for art. Maybe this series refers  to chance---standing on the rocks amongst  the swirling sea waiting for  the formation of  a visual form/image?