Juno Gemes

PROOF

SMH 05.11.07
Files reveal the silly, scary
spies' eye-view of Aboriginal
history

Joel Gibson
CITY WEEKLY 01.11.07
Proof positive

Josie Gagliano
EXPRESS ADVOCATE 30.05.07
Art Culture

Kate Moore
SMH 20.04.04
Beyond fashion to fine
portraiture

Robert McFarlane
SMH 02.04.04
Spotlight: Photography

Sunanda Creagh
SMH 26.03.04
Metro: The Week's Best

Alex Tibbitts, Editor
ART & AUSTRALIA Vol 41 #3
Juno Gemes

Sasha Grishin
SMH 01.01.04
Mixed media in frame

Anne Loxley
ART MONTHLY #166 12.03
Photographic Proof I

Catherine De Lorenzo
ART MONTHLY #166 12.03
Photographic Proof II

Jennifer Isaacs
MUSE #231 08.03
We are also what we have lost

David Wills
CANBERRA TIMES 23.08.03
Political images

Zoja Bojic
SMH 09.07.03
Charting the moves for justice

Angela Bennie
AAS 2003/2
Juno Gemes in conversation


WHERE THE SACRED FISH
   COME IN

THE LANGUAGE OF
   OYSTERS

Reviews

Express Advocate 30.05.07Express Advocate 30 May 2007

Proof: Portrait of a Movement

Art Culture with Kate Moore

Where: Gosford Regional Gallery, East Gosford
When: Until July 22

DESPITE what Juno Gemes calls the ‘‘seductive powers’’ of digital photography, the photographer still prefers to shoot with film.

Gemes travelled from her Hawkesbury River home on Friday night to open her series of photographs, Proof: Portraits of a Movement 1978-2003 at Gosford Regional Gallery.

The exhibition, which will hang until July 22, is one of two exhibitions the gallery has opened to mark Reconciliation Week, this week.

Gemes said viewers’ response to the series – a historical record of Aboriginal activism in the late 1970s, through the ’80s and ’90s – had not changed since it was first exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, in Canberra, in 2003.

Gemes said the response from indigenous Australians was that they were, in some way, connected to the people in the portraits and for non-indigenous viewers, an accessibility and ‘‘immense goodwill’’ for a recognisable and shared history.

‘‘In every community people come along who are connected to someone depicted in the portraits,’’ Gemes said.

‘‘It is a shared memory of seminal events for indigenous justice in this country,’’ Gemes said.

‘‘The other kind of response, from non-indigenous people, is of immense goodwill. What I get is tremendous gratitude and people who tell me I have helped them find a way ‘in’ [to understanding this time in Australia’s history],’’ she said.

Hungarian-born Gemes said her documentation of Aboriginal rights activism had grown to be an important historical archive. The fact it was shot on film had, she hoped, ensured its longevity.

Gemes has worked on maintaining an online archive of the work and responses to the collection.

She said she had to adapt to changes in online technology and computer hardware.

But she said, while she was still able to work, she’d continue to shoot in film.

‘‘I love film for its longevity,’’ she said.


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