Photo Exhibition
Lewis Baltz and Slavica Perkovic
December 9 - 23
Gallery One

Photography Masterclass with Lewis Baltz and friends...
December 8th, 9th & 10th 2006
Gallery Two

Lewis Baltz

Slavica Perkovic

Following on from the very successful No Borders No Boundaries workshop hosted by the School of Art & Design earlier this year, the Photography Masterclass with Lewis Baltz and friends will again showcase the School's dialogue with the international photoart community.

This workshop will investigate contemporary photographic practice with Lewis Baltz, one of the first photographers to use photography as a form of conceptual art. Baltz came to prominence in the mid 70's as one of a group of artists included in the influential exhibition “The New Topographics.”

New topographics was the term used by American William Jenkins to characterise the style of a number of young photographers he had chosen for the exhibition at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York in 1975.

These photographers shared an apparent disregard for traditional subject matter and avoided the subjective themes of beauty and emotion, prefering to document the idea of “social landscape” which explores how man affects his natural environment, a tradition that can be traced back to several photographic series by Edward Ruscha in the early 60's of urban subjects such as petrol stations and Los Angeles apartments.

As part of this group, Lewis Baltz devised a technique that is cool, subtly considered, surgically executed and ironic and his principle photographic series, The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, Park City and San Quentin Point fuse minimalist art conventions with cultural observation.

This Master Class provides a rare opportunity for practicing photo artists working at a post graduate or professional level to interact with Lewis, international photographers Slavica Perkovic and Harvey Benge along with 18 participants in an intensive three day workshop covering the work of each contributing photographer and an open critique of each participants photo art practice.

The workshop will coincide with an exhibition of Lewis Baltz and Slavica Perkovic work at the School of Art and Design's St Paul St Gallery opening Saturday December 9th 2006.