Drawing from Nature: Photo / Drawing works 1987 - 2001
About this ebook
The series points to the importance of nature in the concrete jungles that have become our cities.
“This Lloyd Godman exhibition again shows that crisp, clear vision we have come to expect from his work, Auckland seen from the ground up as no Aucklander sees it. This is not so much a homage to the city as a delightful, quirky, outsider’s view. There is something at once amusing and provocative in this vision of our Queen city. This is not a glossy presentation of the “City of Sails” but rather a city in decay, or at least a place reminded of its eventual past.
Detail and texture offer us visual questions which have become the trademark of Godman’s work. In this exhibition he complements the photographic/drawn questions with a catalogue that deepens and sustains this questioning. Catalogues can help or hinder the understanding of works. Some indeed render images the viewer judges clear, totally opaque! This catalogue reveals the artists intent, his philosophy and the links these have with the images presented.
Here photographs no longer can be discussed as records of the past but, by combining the drawn image, they become prophecies received from the past. Godman presents to the spectator a vision of the moment and complements that instant of communication with deeper questions within the catalogue.
Nature here is observed from an often-idiosyncratic angle, liberated from the confines of the rectangular format. Added to the photographic image is a drawn one, lovingly detailed and richly textured, emphasising Godman’s photographic trademark.
What is clearly important are the questions we are confronted with”.
Ken Laraman
About the author
Lloyd Godman has an MFA from RMIT. He established the photography Dept at the Dunedin Art School which he was head of for 20 years before moving to Melbourne in 2005.
Godman’s work has always focused on environmental issues and in terms of photography, is always experimental pushing the boundaries. Drawing from Nature sees the experimentation intersect the drawing photographic divide and fuse them in an
intriguing manner.
In an environment where there was much debate on the merits of photography as an art; I remember at the opening of Drawing from Nature at Assay Gallery, the head of the Art School was quite shocked and commented, “I had no idea you were are artist as well as a photographer”.
“It is doubtful if Australasia has a more protean, visionary and ecologically committed artist than Lloyd Godman. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1952, and now living in Melbourne, Australia, he has been exploring environmental issues through photography (in combination with sculpture, painting and installations) since the early 1980s. He began taking more or less traditional landscape pictures in the late 1960s, but exposure to iconoclastic artists like Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, and Joseph Beuys inspired him to begin chipping at the edges of photography in the interest of breaking down boundaries”. Black and White magazine USA
“Lloyd Godman’s twin careers of serious and successful organic gardener and practicing artist of great creative energy converge in new and constantly surprising ways to make art about the ecological concerns that underly his gardening. Over almost three decades his art has widened out from relatively traditional landscape photography to include elements of performance, audience participation art and multimedia installation to explore the tensions between electronic consumer society and the ecosystem.” Artlink magazine
“The lateral thinker of Australasian photography”
Julie Millowick 2007
“Expand your consciousness by visiting his inspiring and thought-provoking website: http://www.lloydgodman.net.” Dean Brierly
