The late Rennie Ellis was an acute observer of the life and mores of Australia in the 70’s and 80’s. He managed to be unflinching, but at the same time non-judgemental.
The Rennie Ellis Show
3 April – 8 June 2014
Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road
Wheelers Hill, Victoria, Australia
Website
Richmond fans, Grand Final, MCG 1974
chromogenic print
40.5 x 50.8 cm
courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
From the gallery
The photographer Rennie Ellis (1940″“2003) is a key figure in Australian visual culture. Ellis is best remembered for his effervescent observations of Australian life during the 1970s”“90s, including his now iconic book Life is a beach. Although invariably inflected with his own personality and wit, the thousands of social documentary photographs taken by Ellis during this period now form an important historical record.
The Rennie Ellis Show highlights some of the defining images of Australian life from the 1970s and ’80s. This is the period of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke; AC/DC and punk rock; cheap petrol and coconut oil; Hare Krishnas and Hookers and Deviant balls.
This exhibition of more than 100 photographs provides a personal account of what Ellis termed ‘a great period of change’. Photographs explore the cultures and subcultures of the period, and provide a strong sense of a place that now seems worlds away, a world free of risk, of affordable inner city housing, of social protest, of disco and pub rock, of youth and exuberance.
Mr Muscleman, Albert Park Beach c. 1986
chromogenic print
26.7 x 40.7 cm
courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Don and Patrizia, St Kilda Beach 1985
chromogenic print
40.5 x 50.8 cm
courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Backstage Adjustments 1998
chromogenic print
40.5 x 50.8 cm
courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Bon Scott and Angus Young, Atlanta, Georgia 1978
selenium-toned gelatin silver print
26.7 x 40.7 cm
courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
Fitzroy extrovert 1974
selenium-toned gelatin silver print
40.5 x 50.8 cm
courtesy of the Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive
See additional images in Photo Review Mag app April 2014 issue