Australian photographer William Yang is a storyteller. Yang began telling the stories behind his photographs in the 1980s. What began as a slide night, showing transparencies of his work for friends became a highly developed storytelling style. Yang’s monologue performances have become a signature part of his practice. For the exhibition ‘William Yang: Seeing and…
If you know the work of Australian photographer William Yang, it’s usually his photographs of people and communities that you will be familiar with. Yang captures joyous, confessional and deeply human stories that are heartfelt and intimate in many of his portraits, often writing the narrative about his subject or the moment captured on film…
In 1957, artist James Gleeson, then art critic at The Sun newspaper, wrote that the paintings of Ian Fairweather (1891-1974) would never last.1 Reputedly using whatever materials came to hand within his itinerant lifestyle, the paintings of Fairweather are renowned as much for their fragility as their beauty, and this is part of their appeal.…
Continue reading » “Go behind-the-scenes as we conserve Ian Fairweather’s paintings”
William Yang, like many of his fellow Australian photographers, cannot help but be fascinated with the beach. In 1969, Yang left Brisbane for the bright lights of Sydney, and he fell in love with the city. At a distance from his family and Queensland’s conservatism, Sydney provided an opportunity for reinvention. It was here that…
Vernon Ah Kee is a Brisbane-based Aboriginal contemporary artist who has risen to the forefront of urban-based conceptual art practice. Ah Kee was born in Innisfail, North Queensland and his triptych neither pride nor courage 2006 (illustrated) is part of a series of large-scale hand-drawn family portraits. On two of the three panels, Ah Kee…
While a student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, William Yang wrote and directed theatre productions and began taking photographs. He started photographing architecture, and then turned his camera to people, which is when he found his true passion. In order to make a living as a photographer, Yang began his career taking candid…
Continue reading » “William Yang: Celebrity and portraiture”
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