Spectral Ecologies
Sam Nightingale and Polly Stanton
Curated by Bridget Crone

Mildura Arts Centre
6 April to 18 June 2017

Spectral Ecologies is an exhibition of photography, sound and video that explores the landscape of the Mallee through the idea of the “cinematic”, asking how does cinema create a particular way of seeing? The artists, Sam Nightingale and Polly Stanton, take up this question by exploring the different ways that technologies enable us to see and to experience the landscape of the Mallee as well as the way specific narratives frame what we see, and the way that the land creates its own images.

Polly Stanton’s video, The Spectral Field (2017) includes the first ever drone footage of the Pink Lakes, salt lakes that are situated in the Murray Sunset National Park. In the work, Stanton juxtaposes the overview or bird’s eye view that the drone footage presents with close up imagery and field recordings that immerses us within an unfolding world. While this zoom between the situating-overview and the close up is a familiar cinematic technique, it is also related to what is known as “ground control” or “ground truthing” in surveying or cartography; here the view from above that surveys or maps the landscape is checked by teams of people traversing the same area on foot, at ground level. This process produces a form of “cinematic cartography”, which explores the way that the visual languages of cinema might be utilized to map the landscape differently.

In Sam Nightingale’s multi-dimension work, Cinètracts (2017) produced for Spectral Ecologies, it is the history of cinema itself that provides the map for an engagement with the ecologies of the Mallee, ecologies which he suggests are social and material as well as environmental. Following the route taken by Nulty’s Pictures who ran a pioneering traveling cinema circuit across the Mallee from the 1930s to 50s, Nightingale visits the sites where the Nulty’s projected films (often powered from their Bedford van!). Rather than simply tracing or documenting the Nulty Family’s story, Nightingale attempts to re-enact the route taken, engaging with and inhabiting the sites as they are now. The result is a series of large-scale photographs and videos that engage with these sites of cinema as well as with the Nulty’s story. Like Stanton’s work, Nightingale’s photographs and videos shift between the registers of the image; that is between looking on and being immersed within the world.

The words “spectral” and “ecology” frame the exhibition referring on the one hand to the image and its capacity to present us with forgotten or ghostly histories and imagined futures, and, on the other, to the living world within which we are immersed. In this way, Spectral Ecologies situates itself within the tension between seeing and experiencing or, in other words, between the visual and material worlds. This is exemplified in Nightingale’s series of photographic salt prints in which the artist uses salt collected from one of the Mallee’s many salt lakes to produce the photographs he has taken of the area. In this way, the material of the Mallee and its image are directly entangled, through Nightingale use one of the earliest forms of photographic printing.

Spectral Ecologies includes a series of public events in Ouyen and Robinvale organised in partnership with the Ouyen & District History and Genealogy Centre and Euston/Robinvale Historical Society, 7th, 8th and 9th April 2017.

NOTES FOR EDITORS
Further details can be found at thecinemasproject.com.au

1. Spectral Ecologies is an exhibition that includes photography, video and sound.

2. Spectral Ecologies presents a creative approach to engaging with and depicting the landscape through local history and personal experience, and using new technologies such as drone imagery, HD video and surround sound. Significantly the exhibition engages both with the history of cinema in the region and with the idea of the “cinematic” as a way of seeing.

3. The exhibition presents the opportunity to see the first high resolution drone footage shot of the Pink Lakes in the Murray Sunset National Park.

4. Some of the works in the exhibition reveal the little known history of cinema in the Mallee region.

5. The exhibition is curated by guest curator Dr Bridget Crone, who is an Australian curator and writer living in London where she is Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, the University of London. Since 2011, Crone has been working in Australia on a series of projects under the framework of The Cinemas Project – a programme of new commissions and exhibitions that explore the spectral spaces of regional Victoria.

6. Sam Nightingale is a UK based artist and photographer. He often works with historical archives and local memory to explore specific sites, landscapes and architectures. Recent work in Australia, Europe and the US engages with sites of cinema. For further information: www.samnightingale.com

7. Polly Stanton is an Australian artist living and working in Melbourne. She is known for her video and sound portraits of landscapes as diverse as those of Iceland, Finland and Australia. For further information: www.pollystanton.com

8. Artist, Sam Nightingale has undertaken extensive research into the history of cinema across the Mallee, specifically focussing on the history of the Nulty Family who (in particular Sue Nulty) have generously engaged with Nightingale’s project as well as loaning material to support the work. The work has also benefitted from the locals who have so generously shared their memories in a series of memory-swaps held at Mildura Arts Centre in 2016.

9. Nulty’s Pictures was established by Jim Nulty in the 1930s. Nulty’s Pictures operated a cinema circuit screening films from Walpeup to Birchip to Sea Lake, Piangil and Underbool in the 1930s to 50s. Jim Nulty established the Roxy in Ouyen, and his sons Len and Mick subsequently ran a number of cinemas and drive-ins including the Valley Drive-In, Robinvale; the Rex in Charlton and Crossroads Drive-In in Mildura.

10. Sam Nightingale has worked closely with local History Centres in Ouyen and Robinvale who have actively supported in the project. Each will host a public event discussing the project and Nightingale’s research as well as providing an opportunity for locals to share their own memories of cinema going. These events will be held on the 7th, 8th and 9th of April 2017.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24599