Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society Lectures

Introduction

Iʼm now a freelance academic/architect/lecturer and photographer.
Itʼs been said by others that I have well-developed inter-personal skills. My photography has been awarded prizes and Iʼve also judged competitions. Iʼm passionate about teaching and visual imagery. After 30+ years of university life, I now concentrate on using these acquired skills in more reflective ways: speaking to professional and private groups; writing; practicing social and environmental pho- tography; cultivating bonsais and voluntary work.

I commenced speaking to ADFAS audiences in 1989 (Armidale Society) and have subsequently pre- sented on more than one hundred occasions. Without exception Iʼve enjoyed the hospitality, intellec- tual challenge and sense of community that ADFAS offers its members. Iʼm a long-standing member of the Sydney Society.

Iʼve lectured widely in Australia and internationally; participated and adjudicated art, architecture and photography exhibitions.
Lecture topics other than those detailed below include: ‘The Vernacular House’, ‘Contemporary Art Gallery Design’, ‘Men at Work’, and ‘The Poetics of Light in Architecture’.

Please find further personal details and lecture summaries in the following pages.

Yours sincerely

Adrian Boddy

 

Resume: Adrian Maxwell Boddy

PERSONAL DETAILS:

Australian Citizen, born — 17th November 1945.
Address: 144 Pacific Road, Palm Beach, NSW 2108, Australia. Contact:
Ph: +61 2 9974 5753, +61 447376688; E: adrianboddy@bigpond.com; Web: www.adrianboddy.com

ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS
Master of Applied Science (Research) — Queensland University of Technology (1997). Bachelor of Architecture — University of Melbourne (1971).

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY:
2002 — 2012 2003. 1999 — 2002. 1989 — 2002. 1994&1995. 1976 — 1989. 1971 — 1976.
Architectural Photographer (freelance) and Public Speaker. Visiting Scholar, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. Director of Program, Architecture, University of Technology Sydney. University of Technology, Sydney, Senior Lecturer. QueenslandUniversityofTechnology,SecondedScholar.
New South Wales Institute of Technology, Lecturer.
Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Tutor and Lecturer.

INVITED SPEAKER TO:
• The Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Society (ADFAS) 1989 – 2012.
• Rotary International (Sydney).
• Universities, including UTS, Sydney, Newcastle, Wellington (NZ).
• The Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA), NSW, Melbourne and Brisbane.
• International College of Tourism & Hotel Management, Swiss Hotelconsult Colleges, Sydney,
• Art Galleries: Adelaide Art Gallery, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, and others.
• Aged Care Facilities: Pittwater Palms.
• Public Schools: Avalon Primary, Barrenjoey High School.

AWARDS
• Faculty of Design Architecture and Building Teaching Award, UTS, 2000.
• Inaugural Vice Chancellor’s Excellence in Teaching Award, UTS, 1990.
• Winner, Vice Chancellor’s Award; October 1999 — Fusions on Broadway ’99, UTS

 

PUBLIC LECTURES — (examples include)

 

Lecture 1 (160 illustrations)

The Aesthetics of Traditional Japanese Architecture and Design

Pure and simple
the beauty of the pines
imitates
an image of the past
(Poem by Hanamien Sukinari, c. 1800)

Traditional Japanese building materials such as fabric, timber, stone, clay, metal, fibre and fabric in- form the lecture’s structure… “the plain and un-agitated, the un-calculated, the harmless, the straightforward, the natural, the innocent, the humble , the modest: where does beauty lie if not in these qualities?” (international potter, Bernard Leach).

Architecture’s elements and precedents: paths, gateways, garden walls, framed pavilions, platforms, screens and their associated subdued lighting, broad eaves and designed garden settings are then the subjects for discussion. In all cases traditional Japanese artefacts — painting, sculpture, pottery and utilitarian objects offer a wider context.

Photographic material and first-hand knowledge of traditional Japanese architecture are the result of study trips to Japan in 1985, 1989, 2001, 2002 and 2009. Rather than analysing Japanʼs subtly- changing stylistic traditions — the lecture conveys the overall form and structure of houses, temples and shrines; their finely resolved details, natural finishes, spatial fluidity, minimal interiors and links with landscape.

Note: This presentation can readily be expanded into a series.

Lecture 2 (160 illustrations)

Max Dupain: A Snapshot of Australia’s Pre-eminent Architectural Photographer

Three things matter to me as far as photography is concerned: light, optics and the chemical follow up — but light is the vital part. I adore it. Max Dupain 1992.

The science of photography is now more than 170 years old — indeed its development paralleled the European settlement of Australia. ‘The pencil of nature’, ‘the shadow catcher’ and ‘the mirror with memory’ were early phrases penned to describe the apparently magical mechanical act that enabled the recording of a moment in time — Cartier Bresson called it ‘the decisive moment’. This lecture explores the work of Australiaʼs pre-eminent photographer Max Dupain — who was born in 1911.

At the age of 17, and still at Sydney Grammar, he joined the Photographic Society of NSW, where he met leading local photographers of the day including Cecil Bostok and Harold Cazneaux. For the next sixty years Dupain created photographic images that became emblems within the development of a distinctive Australian tradition in the visual arts.

Within his chosen field Dupain was the dominant Australian figure of his time. He was instrumental in breaking the link with Pictorialism by bringing Modernist and Documentary perspectives to Australian architectural photography. Although he was an innovator in the earlier decades of his professional career, by the 1960’s he was proud to proclaim his ‘straight’ photographic techniques whilst others engaged in more complex practices. Dupain also helped younger photographers to realise their as- pirations. Whilst the lecture positions Dupain as the central character, a wide range of parallel im- agery is also illustrated.

Because Max Dupain was a prolific Australian documentary photographer, any wide-ranging discus- sion of his work is, at the same time, a visual history of Australian architecture, landscape, industry, fashion and everyday life.

Lecture 3 (160 images)

Icy Reflections

Sounds come and go but silence remains.ʼ (Robert Lax , mystic poet, in ʻSnowʼ, 2002)

“Icy Reflections” is a presentation concerning: personal memory, painting, poetry, photography, sculpture and installation art. The aesthetic diversity of Planet Earthʼs frozen landscape is the over- arching theme. Japan, Australia, Patagonia, the Antarctic Peninsular and the UK are specific loca- tions — though the presentation is NOT a travelogue.

In Japan, traditionally understated sumi-e (ink painting) and natureʼs photographic representation are paralleled. Frozen rice paddies, thatched farm-houses, mountain rocks and streams appear as Zen- like compositions. Wabi-sabi, the Japanese aesthetic of the un-pretentious is evoked through poetry. We are reminded that humans are but a minor part of the landscape, rather than masters of it.

The Australian alpine environment is grey-green at a panoramic scale. Yet at close quarters, snow gums, mosses and lichens are highly chromatic. This sequence explores a post-blizzard ‘black and white’ world and unique color-ways as they emerge from misty, snowy light. Photographs are ac- companied and clarified by the poetry of Tasmanian author Ellen Miller.

Frank Hurley is famous for his early twentieth century photographs of Antarctica — penguin parades, hazardous skiing excursions and emblematically, the Endurance trapped in the pack-ice of the Wed- dell Sea (1915) were amongst his many subjects. These photographs are illustrated, and continue to amaze contemporary viewers — yet the authorʼs own photographs have an entirely different pur- pose. Their intention is to frame the colour, texture and morphology of this icy sea and landscape; to distill the extreme and austere beauty ʻbeyond the Southern Oceanʼ. Prose by Helen Garner and Jenni Diski compliment the imagery.

In conclusion, installation art by Christo (with reference to the Patagonian landscape) and Andy Goldsworthy (in the UK) ‘reflect’ on photography and art history, as well as the fragility of Planet Earth.

Lecture 4 (160 Illustrations)

“Modernismʼs Antipodean Migration”:
The Australian House from the 1930ʼs until the present day

In making for ourselves a place to live, we first spread a parasol to throw a shadow on the earth, and in the pale light of the shadow we put together a house.
(Jun-ichiro Tanazaki, ʻIn Praise of Shadowsʼ)

This lecture traces Modernismʼs European and American roots and its subsequent migration to Aus- tralia. In the 1930s members of the Bauhaus, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright were designers at the forefront of the architectural revolution that became known as Modernism. Uncluttered sculp- tural forms, open plans, new industrial materials and systems were their essential palette; light, ven- tilation and outdoor-living their common characteristics.

Relatively, Australian architectural practice lagged by two decades, but by the 1950s Harry Seidler, Robin Boyd, Roy Grounds and others set these new standards in place for Australian residential de- sign.

Today, Gabriel Poole, Glenn Murcutt and a younger generation of architects continue working on the transformation of Modernism with particular emphasis on a ʻsense of placeʼ and the all important question of environmental sustainability.

The presentation concludes with an analysis of examples of the contemporary Australian house.

Lecture 5 (160 Illustrations)

The Photography of the Australian Landscape:
From Daguerreotype to Digital

We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought, in the measure to which we are responsive to it. Lawrence Durrell (Writer)

 

Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappoint- ment. Ansel Adams (Photographer)

Within just a few years of Louis Daguerreʼs announcement of his photographic process to the
French Academie des Sciences (1839), the very same technology was put to use in the far-off British Colony of New South Wales. Subsequently photographers charted our diverse landscape to promote scientific understanding (such as botany), commercial enterprise (mining, agriculture and tourism) and in the less-tangible task of understanding our ʻsense of placeʼ within the world community.

The camera is an ever-changing mechanical instrument, and this in itself has contributed to the pro- duction of a wide variety of visual imagery. Photography also parallels fine art movements; thus the work of Colonial, Pictorialist, Modernist and contemporary practices are influenced by cultural and aesthetic attitudes as well as available technique.

This presentation illustrates the extraordinary range of photographic documentation and interpreta- tion of the Australian landscape over the past 170 years — it also includes some of the authorʼs own work.

RESEARCH AND PAPERS

• ʻBetween the Covers: A Snapshot of Architectural Photographyʼ, Architecture Australiaʼ, vol 93, No. 4, 2004, pp. 20-21.
• ʻDunbarʼ, Architecture Australia, Vol 91 No.2, 2002, pp. 70 – 74.
• ʻClarifying Architecture: Max Dupain, David Moore and John Gollings at Yularaʼ, Photofile No.63, pp. 4 – 8, August 2001.
•  ʻTowards 2000: Steven Lojewskiʼs Homebush Series Before 2000ʼ, Form/Work Number 2, April 1998 pp.63 -74.
• ʻConstructive Images: The nexus between architecture and photographyʼ, Form/Work Number 2, April 1998 pp.89-105.
• Max Dupain and the Photography of Australian Architecture, M. App Sc Research Thesis, QUT, 1996, 2 Vols, pp. 256.
• People + Place: Brisbane’s Contemporary Architecture, (ed), Published by QUT, ISBN: 1 86435638 3, 1995, pp. 48.
• ‘Australian Architectural Photography: People and Place, Ambiguity and Abstraction’, pp. 23, in People + Place: Brisbane’s Contemporary Architecture, Department of AIID, QUT, 1995.
• ‘Linking Architectural Photography and Education’, Queensland Architect, No. 2, 1995, pp. 7 – 10.

EXHIBITIONS:

• In Paradise, Artists of the Northern Beaches, Many Art Gallery and Museum, 2009.
• Technè, UTS Art Gallery, photographs and objects conveying the link between ‘art’ and ‘technology’; July 2000.
• Fusions on Broadway ’99, UTS Art and Craft Exhibition, photographs: Silicon City Series, (winner, Vice Chancellor’s Award); October 1999.
• The Organic Architecture of Pittwater: photographs of landscape and houses by Alexander Stewart Jolly and John Murch, in association with the book edited by Dr Jan Roberts titled: Avalon Landscape and Harmony, Avalon, June 1999.
• Architectural Photography Exhibition, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, invited participant, ʻTusculumʼ, August 6th 1999.
• Antipodean Identity, La Triennale di Milano, photographer and exhibition coordinator.1996. Published in “Domus”, April ’96 and “Identity and Difference’, Electa Milan, 1996, pp. 350 – 359.
• People + Place: Brisbane’s Contemporary Architecture, photographer and exhibition coordinator, State Library of Queensland 1995.
• Lightness + Shade: the Architecture of Brisbane’s Near North Coast, photographer and exhibition coordinator, RAIA Brisbane, 1994.
• Australia: Ancient Landscape, Modern Architecture, Prague, Budapest and Graz, sole photographic exhibitor and lecturer, 1993.
• Sydney 1990, Audio visual production for the C.I.B. “Value in Building Economics and Construction Management Conference”, Sydney 1990.
• Vernacular Architecture, Photographic exhibition and audiovisual presentation to Australian Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, Armidale Art Gallery; Toowoomba Art Gallery; Queensland Art Gal- lery; Royal Society Building, Victoria; August – October 1990.