After the opening  of the Mallee Routes exhibition at Atkins Photo Lab in Adelaide  I linked up with friends in Mildura  to drive to see the Warlpirri's Milpirri Festival at Lajamanu in the Tanami Desert  in the Northern Territory.  It was a 3 day drive. 

This is  one of the  posters that surround the stage  at the Milpirri Festival; the huge painted banners retell  the stories from the different family groups  that have been  learnt.  

The photo of the poster was made at  dusk with my digital camera. I  was at the limits of the capacity of the Sony NEX-7. Though it was an improvement on 400ASA film,  I couldn't go beyond 800 ASA. Friends,  who were using more modern digital camera's (such as  the Sony A7 or  the Fuji X-Pro 2),   could work with  ASA settings 3 times that. Unlike me, they were  then able to  photograph people at the festival after dusk with minimal lighting.    

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This is a  6x4  card that will be part of a series of cards in the Mallee Routes exhibition  in the new gallery space at  Atkins Photo Lab in Adelaide. The exhibition opens on Friday, October 7th, at 7.30 pm.  

There are just under 40 cards---Postcards from the Mallee, as it were. 

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At the opening of the Abstraction x 5 exhibition, which includes abstractions by   Graeme Hastwell, Beverley Southcott, Stuart Murdoch,  Adam Dutkiewicz and myself,  we launched the Abstract Photography  book. The exhibition and launch was yesterday  at the Light Gallery in Adelaide to a full house.  

The  book was written  by Dutkiewicz and myself, and it recovers the lost modernist abstractions made in the 1960s by Adelaide photographers, has a couple of essays by Adam and myself and a number of  abstract photographic  images by Adam  and myself. 

The full title of the book is Abstract Photography: Re-Evaluating Visual Poetics in Australian Modernism and Contemporary Practice, and it was published by  Moon Arrow Press. It was the  lo-fi version--the artist proof of concept--- was launched. The general reaction was that the history, text and contemporary  images in the book hung together well to form a cohesive whole. We'd got there. 

Early this morning on a poodle walk at Petrel Cove:

I hadn't wandered around Petrel Cove  for a quite a while and I decided to  explore the rocks photographically,  given the soft,  early morning light.   

This is the interim poster,  or flyer, for the  first  exhibition for the 3 year collective Mallee Routes project that is to be held  at the Atkins Photo Lab new photography  gallery.  The  exhibition opens on Friday  October 7th,  and it runs for around a month. It  is a work in progress exhibition, that basically  says, 'this is how we started the project everyone.'     

The poster/flyer  was designed by Eric Algra, one of three  photographers involved in the project. He is the project  member  who has  the  most extensive  photographic archives for the Mallee.    

The Mallee Routes project has its own website---though this  is still in a rudimentary state---with a blog containing a few posts.  This means that the  project  now has a public profile.  The  overarching  statement  of the project can be seen here. 

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The Weltraum  exhibition at Magpie Springs officially opened on Sunday,   11 September.  Although the Shimmer Photographic Biennale closes at the end of September,  the Weltraum exhibition remains open until early November--Sunday,  November 6th.   

I now start  preparing for work for  both the Abstraction  x 5  exhibition  at the Light Gallery, which opens on October 1st with its book launch;  and then the Mallee Routes exhibition with Eric Algra and Gilbert Roe, which opens  at the Atkins  Photo Lab gallery on Friday, October  7th. It's a case of one exhibition  down, two exhibitions to go, with the photography budget collapsing under the weight of the costs.   

Curating these exhibitions  has meant that there hasn't  been much time available for my photography;   apart from the odd moment here and there when I am away from the computer screen.  This image was from once such moment:

We- the standard poodles and myself--- just happened to be walking past this dead tree as the sun was setting,  whilst on a poodle walk. The roadside vegetation  along this stretch of road is thinning, and a lot of it is dying. No one cares for  the roadside vegetation--only the roads are looked after. 

On Tuesday last week I  drove  to Magpie Springs to start hanging Weltraum for the  2016 Shimmer Photographic Biennale , which opened on Friday 2nd September.  I encountered fog on the top of Willunga Hill and  Magpie Springs: 

The  last gasp of winter I wondered?  We finished the hanging on Friday morning. Weltraum opens on Sunday, 11th September, at 3pm---a delayed launch due to the various exhibition launches at the other  venues on the Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend.

This behind the camera image of   me photographjng a silo at Peake  for the 15 Silos on the Mallee Highway project was made on a day trip along the Mallee Highway with Maleko.  I needed some  black and white mages  of the silos on the Highway for the Weltraum  exhibition at Magpie Springs  in the 2016 Shimmer Photographic Biennale as the  ones  from an  earlier photoshoot hadn't work out that well.  

The Biennale opens on Friday,  September 2nd. The  8 x 10 image black and white  image of the silo at Peake was not included. It is an outtake due to the the lens vignetting because raising the front standard  to its limit was too extreme for the lens to cover.  I need to stand further back from the silo when I return. 

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Avril Thomas is hosting  A Small World--A postcard exhibition  at  the Magpie Springs  gallery. It is the exhibition  after  the Weltraum  exhibition  in the 2016 Shimmer Photographic Biennale finishes.  The postcards consist of works on paper, they  are 6x4 inches and its international  in scope. 

The 100 or so works will be auctioned through an online auction site  with the proceeds going to help raise money for a cancer charity.

This is one of the pictures  that I am thinking of  entering into the exhibition:

The picture of clouds on the cliffs near  Kings Beach on the Fleurieu Peninsula,  is made with a rangefinder  35mm Leica  film camera,  so the aspect ratio of the negative is 3:2, which  if  uncropped,   will enlarge to print 4x6 inches. 

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Finally some photographic action:

There was some  sunshine early on Sunday morning. So I took advantage of it  to make a 5x4 black and white picture.  I rushed the photoshoot  though because the light had changed from the time I'd scoped it. It hit the tree about 10 minutes earlier than last time.