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sea-In Beverley Southcott Bay Discover Centre, City of Holdfast Bay 1 July - 11 September (extended), 2005  As
winner of the 2005 SALA photo media award, the photographic exhibition,
'sea-In' by Beverley Southcott has had its showing at the Bay Discovery
Centre extended until September 11. This exhibition is a worthy winner
of the prize, not just for its atmospheric and interrogative photography,
but also for its aptly suitable location. Situated just metres from
the Glenelg beach, within a museum dedicated to the ocean near-by,
Southcott's serene beach scenes look out towards their heavily coded
subject. The Glenelg beach, maybe more so than any other beach in Adelaide, occupies a 'postcard' existence. It is a commercialised space with businesses butting up to its shores and residents in towering apartments watching over it daily. Tourists flock by trams, buses and cars to the retail and restaurant filled streets of Glenelg to see where business and the beach meet. The picturesque ocean is the conclusion to the bustling street of Jetty Road and as a result seems to swallow up some of the commercialism. Southcott's photographs capture the local sea, not necessarily Glenelg, in the calmest manner and pair it with coded commercial slogans, jargon and lingo. Calm is present in the ocean, with only a rippling here or there. Only the smallest amount of whitewater breaks upon the shore. The sky is blue with soft white clouds gently moving across. People occupy this space taking walks with their dogs in tow, lost in their relaxed thoughts and encouraged by the tranquil sounds of the water. Yet pervasive text hovers above the horizon line and nestles between clouds to sell the space and label the place beyond a construct of nature. Within each photograph, the text and people glow with a white light that resonates all around them. The sand, sky, sea and inanimate objects are indifferent to this glowing power telling us that the messages embedded in these scenes are for the human inhabitants (and maybe their pets). At the hands of advertising, TV and other products stemming from mass media, nature is often constructed to gain emotional responses from viewers for exploitative or at least moneymaking purposes. We now live in the culture of scepticism (or education) where we are aware of such methods and have been aware for some time. Southcott's exhibition attests to this knowledge, firstly through dry humour embedded in the language of the work and secondly through her photographic constructs that reveal consumer manipulation at play. She has fun playing with language and imagery already loaded with meaning. What is most striking about Southcott's photographs is her intention to imbue the people strolling the beaches with a sense of the oblivious. Similarly to surveillance, these aren't actors but people captured on film for only a brief moment as they walk through the constructed image. In actual fact, they are oblivious and Sea-In 3 is perhaps the clearest example of this. Walkers and two small dogs stroll along the beach unaware, or perhaps aware but indifferent to the constructs around them while a large set of words, 'sublime indifference' sits upon the horizon line. The sublime nature of the beach is emphasised through the large amass of sky and water that dwarfs the walkers. This romantic sublime includes its subjects for just a moment until rejected through oblivion. Reasons for this rejection are numerous; the post modern condition, the overuse of sensational imagery, personal choice of the individual, the list goes on. As this exhibition title suggests, Southcott's works 'sea-in' or 'see in' images of the sea and to the constructs of beach imagery. Phrases such as 'un-reel', 'Send Us An Angel', 'Buy Back Offer' and 'Sum Return' sweep the beaches allowing us to view it through new eyes. sea-in wants us to see beyond the real, to a hyperreality suitable to our image-rich lives.  |
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