UA31316 Lumen Spring 2024 Final Digital - Flipbook - Page 6
Your stories
Noted Australian artist and
University alum Peter Drew,
famed for his AUSSIE series of
posters, shares his views on art
as he creates a new poster for
Lumen featuring one of our
19th century University pioneers.
The art
of creation
Put a contemporary person in front of a camera and, on
some level, they start to perform. As a result, they display a
self-consciousness that’s absent in archival photos. Edith’s gaze
is unburdened by a culture that demands she constantly boost her
online identity. She’s never taken a selfie in her life. It’s as if she
isn’t thinking about the photograph at all. She’s probably got better
things to think about. Where we look hungry for attention, Edith
is calm, dignified and powerful.
I decided some time ago that I’d never design posters for
anyone but myself. After the AUSSIE poster campaign in 2016
I was approached by several brands, but it never went far. Often,
they were looking for a shallow derivative of my popular work and
I wasn’t in a hurry to dilute the style I’d worked so hard to establish.
So, when Lumen editor Mark Douglas got in touch with an idea for
a poster, I was prepared to disappoint him. Then I saw the image
of Edith Emily Dornwell from 1885 and immediately got excited.
Of course, the look in Edith’s eye is also a performance and
there’s a trade-off to her display of formal dignity; her lack of
individual expression. But, to my 21st century eyes, Edith’s made
a good bargain. After all, isn’t it the point of higher education to
improve upon our collective understanding of the world, regardless
of self-expression?
It helped that Edith was the University’s first female graduate
and the first woman in Australia to graduate with a science degree,
but mostly I was taken in by the image itself. I’ve been working
with archival portraits for many years, long enough to realise that
90 per cent of my job as an artist is to simply amplify the power
that is already present in the photograph. For most artists there’s
a temptation to inject themselves into their work but my job is to
stay out of the way.
But today’s culture is addicted to self-expression. We live in
its glut. All around us we see the ugly pollution of excessive
self-expression. For contrast, look at Edith. Doesn’t she look
impressive? Don’t you wish you could look half as serious
a person as she does? Isn’t she a relief?
Archival photos are completely unlike today’s images. They
convey a dignity and authority that’s very difficult to reproduce.
Many contemporary photographers have tried but they rarely get
it right. Even if they nail the formal qualities, which photography
inherited from classical portraiture painting, they never quite
capture the neutral gaze of the subject.
Another temptation artists face is the urge to over explain their
work. I’ve found the opposite approach is more powerful. The
success of my posters is partly due to their unwillingness to explain
themselves. In this way they are designed to irritate, by offering just
enough information to leave a question in the mind of passersby.
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