BY GAIA MUSACCHIO
1. Tell us about your approach to photography. How it all started? What are your memories of your first shots?
My approach to photography derives from my interest in how the medium frames subjective experience in time and how the photograph becomes a physical confirmation of an irretrievable past.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
When I was ten, I moved from Melbourne, Australia to Bangkok, Thailand with my family and lived there into my early teens. This sudden migration into an unknown environment evoked feelings of loss, nostalgia and absence. I would often look at photographs from my past in Australia, overwhelmed by the melancholy that these memory objects would stir within me as I tried to make sense of the distance between my present reality and of the past time depicted in the images. Photographs conceived from that time depict Bangkok’s skyline - hazy, blurred and often at dusk, where the city’s smog would cause some of the most haunting sunsets.
We later returned to Australia and I was pushed back into this state of yearning for a past time – one that was depicted in images (that I could hold in my hands) – but was unreachable in time and space; a time that was gone and could not be retrieved.
These experiences shaped my relationship to photography as I sought to investigate the mediums role in articulating time and how it seeks to fix our needs for remembrance. I wanted to explore the paradoxes that underlie the relationship of photography to memory.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
2.How did your research evolve with respect to those early days?
From a young age, I used the camera as a way of recording my presence in time and place, with the awareness that inevitably the time will pass and therefore the context of the picture will change. Each of these individual photographs have become part of a larger body/collective and contribute to an organically growing archive of irretrievable past defined in pictorial representation.
I wanted to find a way to deal with the overwhelming accumulation of image fragments in a way that could address my content of loss, memory, longing and the complexity of time.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
My research evolved in various ways. After completing my undergraduate studies, I began working part-time at the State Library of Victoria in the Collection Management Division and then went on to work for the Australian Manuscripts Division. Here, I was exposed to archiving principles and collection management strategies that began to weave into my own methodology.
Travel also plays an important role in my practice– I made several personal research trips in Japan, South East Asia and Eastern Europe – before enrolling in an MFA degree in Melbourne.
3. Tell us about your educational path. Master of Fine Art at RMIT University in Melbourne. What are your best memories of your studies. What was your relationship with photography at that time?
I began my tertiary education in a commercial photography degree where one majored in either advertising; fashion; or editorial photography. With the aim of training us for these commercial careers; the course focused on teaching students the techniques and skills of ‘how to get a good shot’. We learned about what and what not to include in the frame; we learned about lighting a scene, staging a scene… what time of day to take a picture (sunset or dusk) – but there was no consideration to the conceptual. The mediums shortcomings and capabilities were overlooked and I felt rather deflated by this. It was a digital tutorial on airbrushing using Photoshop when I realised for certain I had to leave that environment! I held out for a year, before switching into a Fine Art degree and eventually into the MFA Program at RMIT University.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
4. What were the courses that you are passionate about and which have remained meaningful for you?
The MFA program at RMIT University really helped my practice to evolve. The multidisciplinary nature of the program exposed me to other forms of practice and through the discussion and dialogue of the group tutorials; I learnt to understand the content of broader forms of artistic practice. These cross-disciplinary tutorials were a really effective way to observe how my own work was being read and how content could be generated through my decisions regarding properties like scale, timing, repetition etc.
Installation View, MFA Assessment
The program encouraged creative exploration and experimentation. This led me to moving beyond the conventions of the singular photograph, to engage with the pictorial possibilities and variations in relation to my mediums materiality and techniques.
5. Any professor or teacher that has allowed you to better understand your work?
I have been fortunate to work under the guidance of some very motivating and inspirational figures during my tertiary education. I worked with Les Walkling during my undergraduate studies and with David Thomas and Laresa Kosloff as my supervisors in the MFA program. At the beginning of the MFA program my work was about memory - David Thomas encouraged me to use memory (as a device) through formal structures, distribution of images within the space (using repetition, groupings, rhythms, contrasts in scale) to evoke the viewers own memory.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
6. As I can see you have had the chance to exhibit your work in many shows. Any particular advice for young photographers aspiring to display and exhibit their work?
My advice to any creative practioner is to keep engaged, inspired and active. It’s so important to be part of a community of like-minded people to support each other and to keep dialogue and discussion ongoing. Often it is via these professional networks that opportunities arise. Also, running ideas by your professional peers can really go a long way – I will always get a colleague to review my applications for funding or an exhibition proposal well before submission.
I also recommend finding a space – testing your work and documenting it – prior to applying for a show. This can be a really useful way to work through ideas within the proposal body and the documentation can be used as support material.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
There are many components of an art practice that one has to balance, along with other forms of employment. I have found it useful to recognise my peak time of productivity and develop a weekly system/schedule that takes this into account. I’m very much a morning person – my concentration is at its peak in the early morning; an ideal time for reading theory or studio time.
7. You are also among the directors of Australian Thai Artist Interchange. Can you please introduce this project?
I co-founded Australian Thai Artist Interchange (ATAI) together with Rushdi Anwar in July 2012. My own interest in contemporary Thai art stems back to my experience of living in Bangkok as a child and through my regular trips back to Thailand I’ve observed significant changes to the cultural, economical, socio- political and environmental climate. I’m really interested in the ways in which contemporary Thai artists are making sense of these changes through their work.
ATAI’s focus is to facilitate creative collaborations and connections between Australian and Thai Artists. Our first project, The Hua Krathi Project, aimed to present contemporary Thai art to a broad Australian audience. It included exhibitions, forums and lectures that took place in March 2013 over university, non-for-profit galleries and public spaces in Melbourne.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
We are currently planning for our next project which include both Thai and Australian artists in Bangkok for 2015, as well as some smaller co-curated projects in Australia.
8. What about EYE Collective now…
EYE Collective comprises of the art practices of Trudy Moore, Steph Wilson and myself. We all graduated from the MFA program at RMIT University in 2010 and formed Eye Collective soon after as a way of maintaining the critical discussion and feedback process that we experienced during our time in a shared studio environment.
Our engagement with the materiality of our mediums, the installation component of our practices, as well our shared interest in notions of presence, absence, interiority, and exteriority has led to numerous projects. Through a sort of tutorial process – contemplation of the architecture of the site of installation, discussion, and conversation – we explore ways to juxtapose our own individual works within the space in such a way that a constant dialogue flows and exists between them. In some projects, we have also explored ways to conflate our mediums of photography, painting, drawing and collage to create a single work.
Installation View, KINGS ARI, Melbourne
The collective runs in conjunction with our own individual practices - we aim for at least one project annually. Eye Collective’s upcoming project: Constructing Absence Part III is a site-specific project for Mailbox (an artist run initiative) in April in Melbourne.
9. About your work now. How would you described your personal research in general?
My film-based practice contributes to the field of photography through the creation of pictorial and spatial structures that use images from my personal photographic archive in combination with installation strategies and components of text. These structures aim to generate contemplation on the transitory nature of image, meaning, memory, loss, absence and the function of the archive.
By retrieving earlier photographs and combining them with more recent photographs, I develop new sets of formal relationships and construct and re-construct components of narrative – both within the space of a singular print and within the installation. This methodology attempts to tie photography back to the way that we experience things in real life. Time operates in an organic and continuous way – but our experiences and recollections are fragmentary.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
My work engages with the materiality, physicality and process of photography to address the contingency of the medium. This includes revealing the material properties and artefacts of the film, like including the black edges of the film strip that disrupt the image, or even scratching into the film emulsion or the paper surface of the printed image - presenting a type of photograph that is less stable and more inherent to memory.
10. Do you have any preferences in terms of cameras and format?
I have a range of 35mm SLR cameras and lenses – many have been handed down to me by people who have ‘gone digital’. There is certain casualness about using an SLR camera – it’s versatile in terms of its size and weight, I’ve used this type of camera since I was very young.
I also use a Hasselblad medium format camera – and I do love this camera; its highly mechanical body, its weight… It has a very physical presence. I consider the act of taking a photograph to be a highly romantic gesture as it captures a frame in time that becomes a fragment, isolated from its whole. Viewing the world through the Hasselblad seems to embody this notion – the framing and taking of a picture is a carefully orchestrated procedure that simultaneously evokes contemplation and reflection on the very act of taking a photograph in itself.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
11. Are there any contemporary artists or photographers, even if young and emerging, that influenced you in some way?
There are a range of contemporary artists who have influenced my practice in some way. I’ve been particularly influenced by the complex language of photography and installation practice ofWolfgang Tillmans and his investigations of the object of photography in its many physical forms.
I’ve also been looking at artists like Sara VanDerBeek, Laurie King & Brendan Fowler whose work moves beyond the conventional photographic language. Recently I’ve been looking at the paintings of English artist George Shaw in relation to urban melancholy, nostalgia and memory. His landscapes are based upon photographs taken of and around his childhood home in England and they really resonate with me.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
I also visited Belgian Artist Nico Dockx at his studio/library in Antwerp last year and was particularly influenced by his work with archives and his collaborations and book projects that form the outcomes of this work.
Other artists who continually influence my practice include Luigi Ghirri, Franchesca Woodman, Candida Hoffer, Zoe Leonard, Tacita Dean, Vija Celmins, Ibon Aranberri, Manfred Pernice, Gerhard Richter, Patrick Pound, David Thomas…. The list could go on and on!
12. Three books of photography that you recommend?
I will recommend four!
Wolfgang Tillmans, ‘Manual’, Koln, Verlag der Burchhandlun Walther Konig, 2007;
John Berger, ‘And our faces, my heart, brief as photos’, Bloomsbury Publishing, 1984;
Stephen Shore, ‘The Nature of Photographs’, Phaidon Press; 2nd edition, 2010;
Geoffrey Batchen, ‘Forget me not – Photography and Remembrance’, Princeton Architectural Press; 2004.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
13. Projects that you are working on now and plans for the future?
Reflecting on the evolutionary nature of his practice, Wolfgang Tillmans says “Looking back, looking into the work provides the key of how to carry on”. This is especially applicable to my archival practice, where the constant influx of new material ensues that meaning and context are continually shifting; new formal and narrative relationships are forever being formed.In my practice, each project – is in some way a continuation of the last - presenting new arrangements of imagery in combination with earlier pictures.
I am really excited to begin working on my first book project that will use my recent exhibition at Beam Contemporary, ‘A Way With It All’ as a departure point, to explore/unpack some of my working processes.
It’s often said that my work would lend itself well to the form of a book. Integral to book design is consideration to; how the image is laid out and arranged on the page; the proportion of negative space to image; how the image bleeds off the edge and to the space of the gutter and the margin These sorts of spatial, structural, design, format and presentation decisions are ever present when I arrange and construct my Image Compilation pieces – as well as within the installation process itself.
© Melanie Jayne Taylor
I will also be undertaking a research trip to Kurdistan, Turkey, Germany and London in the later part of the year that will include an exhibition, as well as participating in an ongoing group project centred on ideas concerning photography and installation.
I’m also in the process of setting up my studio in countryside Victoria and looking forward to observing how the slower pace of this environment and being immersed in nature will impact on my new work.