#i think the closest to . current canon sexuality we have is a cropped image of gg saying hes not interested in dating

[noisemastter]

so,

its like that

[13242627guestlectureseries-blog]

LECTURE 2 - 25 MARCH 2019 - DREW CONNOR HOLLAND Drew Connor Holland is an Australian artist who works at an intersection between print making, painting and photography to push the limitations and blur the boundaries of what an image can be.

Holland began painting with a desire to be a ‘painter’s painter’, a ‘serious artist’, idolising Roman virtuosity and masculinity. As his studies progressed, he realised that he was “far too wrapped up in the history of male painting” (Holland, D.C, 2019) as a subconscious way to closest his sexuality and that his obsession with the old failed his practice from being modern or relevant. Stephen Little’s ‘Equinox ES 74′ series shifted Drew’s artistic desires, leading him to realise that he didn’t want to simply rehash an aesthetic category but rather that he must add to it.

Holland became wrapped up in the idea of what paint was as a material history, what it means to make something and go through an archive, particularly in terms of paper and the digital image, and ‘material memory’ - the potential for tactile items to function as sentimental archives. This has led to his current practice which occupies an interesting space between the digital and physical. He works with an archive of screenshots of cropped bodies from automated video games and digitally collages them with fragments of his own personal histories, then prints his images on paper that he makes himself. The cropped bodies use composition as a tool to implicate meaning beyond the frame and challenge the stereotype of the body in art, focusing on delicate and intimate moments that communicate themes of central loneliness, gravitational empathy (empathy as a non-judgemental force that is felt by all of us) and tenderness. 

Holland explained that he automates the video games when collecting screenshots in order to purposefully withdraw his own white male body from his work and embrace this as an opportunity to talk about dissatisfaction of broader cultural narratives. He views himself as a curator, not a participant. There are complications here in Holland’s approach to neutrality regarding the fact that curating is a form of participation which ultimately still present’s his personal, unique voice. Regardless, by blending boundaries between various mediums, broad cultural nostalgias and personal histories, Holland pushes against his fear of hauntology by situating his work in a virtual space outside history.

Holland’s lecture led me to think back to our Global Studio visit to Torbjørn Rødland’s studio in LA, and the advice he gave us in regards to finding your voice as an artist:

1. Identify the voices out there that speak to you. 2. Attack the remains of that influence in your own work with violence

With the current state of the rapidly expanding field of photography, the identity of the photograph has been thrown into question. The parameters that have been set up are in flux, especially with automated photography and the fact that the photographer does not necessarily have be in the image making equation. What does it look like to shed the canon of photography and let it fall away – to work photographically but apply that to other ways of making that are outside of what we traditionally understand as being photography?

‘9-Eyes of Google Street View’ by Jon Raffman is a great example of extending the boundaries of what it means to ‘make’ a photograph and reminds me of Drew’s identification as a curator, not a participant: 

http://9-eyes.com

This work is both an archival project and a conceptual meditation on the state of photography in a time of automated image making on a massive scale.

Another aspect that I found interesting during Holland’s lecture (and got a little bit obsessed with!) is titling. Drew uses titling as poetic entry points into the way he wants the viewer to feel about his work, as well a tool to reference his own personal histories.

Titles did not exist pre-the growth or the art market and the mobility of images for public exhibitions as few pictures hung outside private homes and so the title was not required. Today too, it is very rare that a picture would be accompanied with a label within a private setting. However, with the circulation of art, visual literacy was threatened and so titles were introduced to explain to the viewer what it was they were looking at where cultural narratives and personal histories may not have been known. Paradoxically, “the modern and popular ‘Untitled’ still functions in the same way, circulating in culture and instructing us, if only by negation, how to view it.” (Bernard Yeazell, R. 2015, para.2). For me, there are parallels between Untitled as an active title and curating as active participation. Ultimately, is it ever possible to achieve neutrality in art (read: life)?

Bernard Yeazell, R. 2015, The Art That Has No Name,  The History of Titling in Painting, The New Republic, New York, <https://newrepublic.com/article/125621/art-no-name>.

Holland, D.C. 2019, Guest Lecture program, 80067, UTS, Sydney, 25th March 2019.