Stephen Cummins - A Retrospective

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Event Stephen Cummins - A Retrospective
Venue The Performance Space (1983-2007), Redfern, NSW
First Date 23 February 1995
Opening Date 22 February 1995
Last Date 11 March 1995
Dates Estimated No
Status Professional
World Premiere No
Description "The Performance Space is privileged to be able to present a survey of Stephen Cummins' work which, despite his short career, was remarkable for his contribution to film and photography." (Summer 1994-1995 brochure)

"In curating this retrospective of Stephen Cummins' work we've spent many hours looking at his images, reading essays, applications and, reviews, publicity material and drafts of scripts - getting an understanding of some of his thoughts and an overview of his work. Once again Stephen had drawn people together to discuss ideas, talk about issues of representation, only this time it was about how to represent and somehow do justice to his work. We could only really speculate about what Stephen may have chosen and what we have selected represents for us a range of his work, which is as beautiful as it is engaging.

In selecting works for the exhibition, we have primarily chosen from Stephen's three major bodies of work and have attempted to represent a cross section of differing elements within his photographic practice. Images from the series, Le Corps Image constitute a substantial part of the exhibition. His film of the same name can also be seen here in a video compilation of Stephen's films which necessarily form part of this retrospective. Le Corps Image was completed during this time as a Post Graduate student at Sydney College of the Arts and most clearly demonstrates the crossover between his photographic and film practice. We have included a short extract of Stephen's own writing about the basis of the work here.

Enthralled was a collaboration with Ara Koopelian, exhibited just as debate about the gay community's narrow definition of the body beautiful became topical. We are also pleased to be showing some work from the series Ripe, a collaboration with Frances Joseph which was never printed or exhibited due to a lack of funding." (Debbie Lee & Jonathan Parsons)
Description Source Programme
Primary Genre Other
Secondary Genre Exhibition
Organisations
Contributors
Name Function Notes
Frances Joseph Collaborator
Ara Koopelian Collaborator
Debbie Lee Curator
Jonathan Parsons Curator
Stephen Cummins Visual Artist
Further Information Catalogue is available in the Performance Space Archive.
Event Status Completed
Data Source
Source Description
Performance Space Database
Data Set AusStage
Event Identifier 142016