The 2008 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: SIMON TERRILL
Crowd Theory: Footscray Station 2006
type C print
170 x 250 cm
produced in association with Footscray Arts Centre
© the artist
Swarm 2005
type C print
180 x 230 cm
© the artist
Simon Terrill is a photographer with an interest in the natural sciences
involving complexity and emergent theory. However his particular interest is in
the self-generated energy of the human organism, specifically in crowd
behaviours. To create Swarm, he spent a day in a light tower watching the
crowd attending Sydney’s 2005 ‘Big Day Out’ concert. This is a traditional type
C photograph, using a long exposure in which moving individuals in the crowd
create a painterly blur, while the static elements are clear.
Between the groups of people is detritus – litter, discarded possessions -
representative of Freud’s suggestion that crowd behaviour takes on its own
careless dynamic. And Terrill’s view from above allows people to be seen
clinically - like insects on a slide, tiny, insignificant - yet part of an
organism which is more than the sum of its parts.
His background in the theatre is more obvious in Footscray Station. In
this work, and another significant community-driven event which produced
Southbank, from the ‘Crowd Theory’ series, heightened lighting and a sense
of staginess, make overt the largely constructed nature of these images.
Brueghel is an influence, but also ideas about crowds espoused by the likes of
Baudelaire and Freud. Daniel Palmer suggested that Terrill’s work fused “social
reality with carefully constructed artifice”1. Its impact on the
Footscray and Southbank communities extend their influence beyond the event and
artworks themselves into the life of the community.
1 Daniel Palmer, Crowd Theory, catalogue essay, 2006.
Louise Martin-Chew
from her Samstag essay;
Alternative Realities
| Born 1969, Melbourne, Victoria |
||
| 2005 | Master of Fine Art, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne | |
| 1998 | Bachelor of Fine Art, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne | |
| Awards | 2008 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship |
| 2005 | KPMG Tutorship Award | |
| 1997 | National Gallery of Victoria Trustees Award | |
| Individual Exhibitions | 2007 | Crowd Theory #2, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne |
| 2006 | Crowd Theory, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney | |
| 2005 | 4Hz, Ocular Lab, Melbourne Orbit, West Space, Melbourne Crowd Theory, Gabriel Gallery, Melbourne |
|
| 2002 | H>M>L, 45 Downstairs, Melbourne 7 Lonely Drivers, Enjoy Gallery, New Zealand |
|
| 2001 | Four Photographs and A Sculpture, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne | |
| 1999 | Horizon Line of a Room, TCB Art
Inc, Melbourne Machine Primate, Stop 22, Melbourne |
|
| Selected Group Exhibitions | 2007 | Constructed Realms: Photography as Theatre,
Albury Regional Art Gallery, Albury Everyday I Make My Way, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne Perfect For Every Occasion: Photography Today, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne |
| 2006 | City of Perth Photo-media Award,
Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth The William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize, Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne |
|
| 2003 | Transfigure, Australian Centre for The Moving Image, Melbourne | |
| 2002 | Deep Space: Sensation & Immersion, Australian Centre for The
Moving Image, Melbourne Truckstop, Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, Beijing, China; and Vidarte, Mexico City, Mexico |
|
| Collections | Albury Regional Gallery Monash Gallery of Art Artbank KPMG Collection Macquarie Bank Collection |