| Some background thoughts by the artists. Simon Alderson It’s 3am... You are slouched at a corner table in a 24 hour bar. The sharp electronic buzz of a nearby card machine fails to penetrate the thick alcoholic fog clouding your senses. Cigarette smoke from an abandoned ashtray drifts into your eyes and stings your cataracts a darker shade of red. You try to focus on the beer glass in front and a dull pain throbs vaguely somewhere at the base of your skull. The beer glass comes in and out of focus as your head slowly sways to the sound of a soft hissing belch. You peer closer at the glass and in the midst of all this bleak early morning ugliness comes a moment of silent clarity. Right there in front of you appears a beautiful mountain vista stretching off into the distance. Huge alpine peaks scrape the sky in endless procession leading down to smooth low-lying estuaries and lakes. Suddenly it hits you; Beerscapes are here. Kent Johnson It was a tough job but somebody had to do it. Simon's vision is pretty clear (even if smoke does get in your eyes). To create these shots we enlisted the aid of dedicated friends and creative drinkers to realise the vision of beerscapes. As an artist and photographer, in a purely technical sense I would add that traditionally the camera miniaturises the outside world but in beerscapes beer comes under microscopic scrutiny and looms large as a landscape of its own. Beerscapes are landscapes of the imagination temporarily etched in the sides of beer glasses and digitally printed as large format photographic prints. A collaborative work by designer Simon Alderson and photographer Kent Johnson.
beerscapes WORKSHOPPED presented beerscapes.
An exhibition of recent collaborative works by
Kent Johnson and Simon Alderson.
The Art House Hotel, August 2 to 22 2004,
275 Pitt Street Sydney. |
