Jane Burton 'other stories' opens Thursday 5th of April 2012

 Other Stories is a collection of photographs that are intended to be experienced as a series of impressions: loose associations rather than determined narratives.  Structured with five chapters like a fairy-tale collection, each series is toned in a different colour. These tones, reminiscent of old photographic processes and hand-colouring techniques, have been selected to bring particular associations of atmosphere and emotion to the images.

La Bête #1 2011 pigment print on paper, 40 x 54 cm

Each series, or chapter, can be viewed as unique and self-contained, though elements from each thread through from one to another, creating symbolic associations and unconscious links between chapters.

The atmosphere common to all the stories is cinematic and dreamlike. Saturated with colour (peach-sepia, red, viridian green, lavender, and blue), each series has its own emotional pitch and temperature; the ‘story’ is non-linear, non-literal, falling instead between remembrances, hallucination, and fantasy.

Limbo #7 2011 pigment print on paper,
60 x 40 cm

Whether depicting a figure, landscape, interior, or object, the photographs are imbued with a weight of meaning and emotional intensity. The landscapes for example, are rendered as symbolic, psychological – places imagined, felt, remembered, rather than actual or specific locations.  The female figure depicted, as both woman and child, is like a character that moves through the stories, an animating presence but more ghost than a definitive persona. As in a dream scape, she shifts through temporal zones, locations, scenarios and a variety of roles; an embodiment and psychological reflection of these and other stories.

This exhibition features a selection of photographs from Jane's recently published book – Other Stories. This book is one of three published under the title 3 Books, comprising three separate photographic monographs by three contemporary Melbourne artists - Jane Burton, Darren Sylvester, and Simon Terrill.  The books are designed by Darren Sylvester, edited by Helen Frajman and published by M.33, Melbourne.

Sleep has his house #10 2011 pigment print on paper

Jane Burton is one of Australia’s most renowned mid-career artists working in the photographic medium. Born in Brisbane in 1966, she studied at the Tasmanian School of Art before undertaking the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris - Lloyd Rees Travelling Scholarship and Residency in 1993 and then moving to Melbourne. Since that time Burton has exhibited extensively throughout Australia with numerous solo and group exhibitions. In 2008 she was included in Trace Elements: spirit and memory in Japanese and Australian photomedia at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Japan and in 2012 will undertake the 24HR Art Beijing residency. Her work has been critically acclaimed and resides in numerous public and private collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, the Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, the Sovereign Art Foundation, Hong Kong and London and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Burton’s work has gained considerable critical and curatorial attention over the last 15 years. Often described as an investigation into the feminine, her oeuvre has also explored landscape and the architectural. The world of Jane Burton’s photography is a morass of mystery, nostalgia, film noir, potential threat, sense of place, spirituality and sexuality; a world of dread and desire, beauty and melancholia.


View exhbition online http://www.bettgallery.com.au/artists/burton/otherstories/index.html