Ben Apfelbaum

TACITA DEAN EXHIBITION @ MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Tacita Dean ‘The Wreck Of Hope’
Tacita Dean ‘!50 Years of Painting ‘

Tacita Dean ‘Paradise’
Tacita Dean ‘Monet Hates Me’
Jane Devery, Tacita Dean, Suzanne Cotter
Tacita Dean ‘Inferno’
Tacita Dean ‘Geography – Biography’
Tacita Dean ‘Exceptional Study for ‘Threshold for Purgatory’
Tacita Dean ‘Chalk Fall’

The Museum Of Contemporary Art  is currently hosting the works of one of the most important living artists of our time. Dean is renowned for her distinctive body of works encompassing film, photography and drawing which she brings together in multi-sensorial installations.

This Sydney exclusive exhibition is the largest presentation of the Uk artists’ work in the southern hemisphere. It brings together recent film works, monumental chalkboard drawings, photographic and print series in a remarkable audio visual experience.

In a Q and A session Dean railed against the prevalence of digitalisation in art and film works. She and the distinguished director Christopher Hampton noted that many analogue works were digitised and then discarded

As a result, all her film works are shot in 35mm format and she says she does not work  in different media contexts (with its association with  digital production)  but rather works in different mediums.

The exhibition was curated by Jane Devery, Senior Curator, and Megan  Robson, Curator, and runs until 3 March 2024.

Featured image – Tacita Dean ‘Event For A Stage’. Text and photos of artworks by Ben Apfelbaum

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.