Head west
South
Australians are partial to a festival - after all, SA isn’t the
Festival State for nothing.
Neville Cichon has borrowed the label for his series of photographs which turns the spotlight away from the performers onto the audience.
Some of these photos are on display at Hindley Street’s popular Phat Coffee as part of the second Art West exhibition of student art in, on or around shop windows, vacant facades and trader’s walls in Adelaide’s west end.
It’s only the second public exhibition for Cichon, a third-year visual communication (graphic design) student, whose interest in black and white, documentary photography was sparked by an elective subject.
"I set Festival State as a project for myself that I could do from January to March, before study got too hectic, when I could make an effort to go to a number of festivals," Cichon says. "Hence a collection of five festivals: Jacob’s Creek Tour Down Under, the Fringe, the Adelaide Festival, WOMAD and the Clipsal V8 Supercars."
"Instead of focusing traditionally on the performers and the stars of these festivals, I thought I’d focus on the festival goer who keeps these festivals going. I wandered around the venues to pick up on their key characteristics and to see what common threads might have appeared. It was shot on the run, it was purely quick observational things and then sitting back afterwards with a collection of over 400 images to sift through. And then I found there were some interesting links and contrasts."
Cichon says he will continue to explore and experiment with photography as an integral part of his graphic design work.
"There are parallels with design thinking and the fact that photography, for a designer, can be a strong part of what you do. For my assignments, I can choose to use photography as a significant element of my projects for poster design or brochures or whatever it might be."
Art West is an initiative of the Adelaide West End Association (AWEA) and the South Australian School of Art, incorporating students from Helpmann Academy visual art partner schools: the South Australian School of Art, Adelaide Centre for the ARTS and Adelaide Central School of Art. It runs until March 18.