Winter is a great time to visit Melbourne. Recently, I travelled to Melbourne for the Van Gogh exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria and was extremely pleased to find myself in the middle of the Festival of Photography. What particularly caught my attention was Patrick Pound: The Great Exhibition at the NGV Australia in Federation Square, nearby. Patrick Pound is a collector not a photographer. This exhibition features a vast assortment of photographs which are organised according to themes. They were discarded or sold by their owners and have been reinvigorated and join this conglomeration of unwanted photographs to reveal many interesting aspects of our daily lives. Some feature celebrities but the majority are unknown. Great care and attention has gone into the selection, arrangement and presentation of these photographs which are also accompanied by artworks from the NGV’s Collection.
(Sorry, awaiting permission for photos)
This inspiring exhibition provides many intriguing ideas of how to display and organise your photographs, even those that would seem worthless with shadows, mishaps or missing parts or writing on the back.
At a recent NGV talk Patrick Pound said that “to collect is to gather your thoughts through things”. There was also an interesting exhibition in 2008 called Order and Disorder- Archives and Photography which sounds worth exploring if your interested. If you are in Melbourne, Patrick Pound’s exhibition is running to the 30 July 2017 and is well worth a visit, especially if you also get to visit the nearby Hopetoun tea rooms.
Explorers Tree 