Image: Elisa de Courcy and Martyn Jolly performing with ‘dissolving view’ 1880’s magic lantern slide projectors (www.photoaccess.org.au)
MARTYN JOLLY & ELISA DE COURCY Magic Lanternists
ALEXANDER HUNTER Composer/ Musician
Rhomboid Studio & Performance Space Sunday 24 April 5pm
TICKETS
A Magic Lantern performance using two original ‘dissolving view’ magic lanterns from the 1880s, projecting original hand-painted and collodion magic lantern slides from the 1880s to the 1890s, accompanied by live music from Alexander Hunter. Audiences are encouraged to view the slides and lanterns, and ask questions after the performance.
Performance 1 - Chromatropes, original hand-painted clockwork magic slides which mechanically generate abstract pulsating patterns and optical effects
Performance 2 - I Would Not, If I Could, Forget, collodion magic lantern slides originally made by Alfred Allen in the Blue Mountains in 1889
Dr Martyn Jolly is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University School of Art and Design, artist and writer, participating in major group shows, and developing solo exhibitions which creatively re-use archival photographs. Works from Wonderful Pictures and 1963: News and Information, are in the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, and Canberra Museum & Gallery collections. He completed his PhD on fake photographs and photographic affect at the University of Sydney in 2003. His book, Faces of the Living Dead: The Belief in Spirit Photography, was published by the British Library, as well as in the US and Australia, in 2006. In 2011, he undertook a Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia, and a Collection Scholar Artist-in-residence Fellowship at the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. In 2014, he received an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, along with Dr Daniel Palmer, to research the impact of new technology on the curating of Australian art photography. Since 2015, he has developed collaborative magic lantern performances around Australia. In 2020, with Elisa deCourcy, he co-edited The Magic Lantern at Work: Witnessing, Persuading, Experiencing and Connecting, and co-authored Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: The Global Career of Showman Daguerreotypist J. W. Newland, both published by Routledge. His book, co-authored with Daniel Palmer, Installation View: Australian Photography Exhibitions 1848-2020, was published in 2021.
www.martynjolly.com @martyn_jolly
Dr Elisa deCourcy is an art historian, specialising in early photography and based at the Australian National University (ANU). She holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA fellowship for a project titled: ‘Capturing Foundational Australian Photography in a Globalising World’. Her scholarship is informed by deep archival research, practice-led investigation and a re-thinking of digital design for heritage collections of photography. From 2016-2019 she was the Research Fellow and Research Assistant on two photographically-centred ARC Discovery Projects: 'Heritage in the Limelight: The magic lantern in Australia and the world' run out of the School of Art and Design, ANU, and 'Curating Photography in the Age of Photosharing', co-administered between ANU and RMIT, Melbourne. In 2018 she was awarded a Harry Ransom Fellowship from the University of Texas in Austin, and an Australian Academy of the Humanities Publishing Subsidy Award in 2019. Both of these grants contributed to an extended book project, Empire, Early Photography and Spectacle: the global career of showman daguerreotypist J.W. Newland, co-authored with Martyn Jolly and released by Routledge in January 2021. Her work has been covered by The Guardian, The Smithsonian Magazine, and The Conversation.
Elisa de Courcey Biography
Dr Alexander Hunter is a composer with Scottish, German and Red River Métis heritage. He studied composition, double bass, viola da gamba and ethnomusicology at Northern Illinois University, and received a PhD in composition from Edinburgh Napier University. In 2014 he relocated to Canberra to lecture at the Australian National University School of Music. Hunter has taught composition, theory and history, and founded the ANU Experimental Music Studio. His work as a composer is based on open works, which encourage a fluid relationship between composer, score and performer.
www.alexanderhunter.com.au @huntercomposer
MAPBM and Lumière wish to thank the Artists and the Australian National University for their support in making these performances possible.