some influences

I have revisited a number of books-Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, Ways of Seeing by John Berger, On Photography by Susan Sontag, all the works by Allain De Botton, perhaps most importantly the Art of Travel, an anthology of Beat Poetry, a collection of Keats, the Penguin version of Herodotus The Histories, Art History Versus Aesthetics edited by James Elkins, and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin. Photographers and Painters in their publications such as Robert Vickery-The Magic of Realism, Keith Carter in Holding Venus, the 20 Year Retrospective by Michael Kenna, the Hawaii Series by Brett Weston, Lynn Geesaman's Gardenscapes, Gerhard Richter's retrospective at the Tate Modern and Todd Hiro, A Divided Road all helped to inform my progress and inspired me to work beyond the image. Digital technology has allowed for the most democratic of image making-instantaneous, easy, cheap. But it seems now-perhaps more importantly than ever, there must be the desire to produce a body of work that transcends the technology, the cliche and the mundane. In the Sydney Morning Herald an art reviewer called silver gelatin technology "old fashioned" without once referring to the qualities of the image or the paper surface. Michael Kenna is producing sublime, jewel like images using cameras from the 1980's. His responses are always "they keep on working". Sally Mann uses a view camera over 100 years old, Keith Carter produces ethereal narratives with a trusty Hasselblad 6 x 6 and a shift lens used in a most unconventional manner. This is not to discount the technological changes. Murray Fredericks uses digital technology in the most extraordinary way-inspirational really. The work I have made is totally reliant on the digital printing solutions offered. It has been a steep learning curve to produce the images in the digital darkroom. I still print all the images individually and personally-a choice I enjoy and one inspired by Brett Weston who hand printed every single image he produced for his folios. I think of the images for the exhibition Substance and the Lightness of Touch as dreamscapes as they are the memories of the place.

Tiffanie Brown, Peter Rohan and Peter Ranyard have an exhibition at M16 in Griffith Canberra in Late March 2014-Beyond the Surface

The work will include watercolour paintings from the Sulman finalist, muralist and illustrator Tiffanie Brown, etchings from master designer and fine artist Peter Rohan and a series of black and white prints by Peter Ranyard.