 Jewellery & Fashion Designer: Annika Forsberg - Photographer: Lightbox Studio As increasing numbers of young artists learn to enhance their creative talents with the less subtle art of self-promotion, the ubiquitous self-portrait ‘press shot’ has become an essential tool to market one’s practice. But there is no reason why publicity images cannot be imaginative, as illustrated by X-Press Shots: X-Hibits, a showing of artist’s publicity photographs organised by Youth Arts Queensland’s Transit Lounge.
Transit Lounge is an organisation that assists and equips emerging artists with the necessary resources to establish themselves as artists, and the X-Press Shots exhibition is the unexpected result of a simple Transit Lounge-run exercise in arts marketing. Earlier this year, the organisation launched a new series of ‘Support Sessions’ called X-Press Shots. The sessions provided young creative types with the opportunity to spend half and hour with a photographer (from Lightbox Studio) to get professional press shots taken, either of themselves or their artistic product.
Explains Transit Lounge Space Coordinator Karleen Gwinner, “Quite often [artists] don’t have the resources to go out and pay photographers to do that kind of publicity for them.” Thus the initiative came about, says Gwinner, to assist young artists and musicians to create promotional materials – to put on myspace pages, include with CDs, or send out with media releases.
The response from the participants involved was so positive, and the resulting photographs so stunning, that Transit Lounge decided to exhibit the images in their own right and use the exhibition as an opportunity to showcase the varied work of the young artists.
“The images were quite amazing,” says Gwinner, also the curator for X-Press Shots: X-Hibits, “and a wonderful snapshot of the variations of art forms that the people were involved in. We have jewellery makers, fashion, music … theatre, visual arts, quite a broad range of people.”
A broad range indeed: the images included in the exhibition provide a glimpse in each of the featured participant’s artistic character and practice. Artists included are actors Aaron O’Brien and Ross Balbuziente, jewellers and fashion designers Amanda Heelan and Annika Forsberg, circus performer Tami Dawson, writer/blogger Tiara Shafiq, and musicians Steph Lees, Miranda Deutsch, Kate Thomas, Christopher Assier, 8Ball Aitken, as well as hip hop artists Eamon Hill and Zach Humphrey from Publik Relation.
On deciding on a curatorial focus for this eclectic bunch, Gwinner explains: “We knew that the images would come together well – we then opened it up to the artists to choose their image, the image that they most wanted to portray. And the concept was to present themselves as the ‘artist’ rather than just the headshot… In terms of curating it, they had to consider ‘How does this actually present me?’”
The exhibition will also highlight the role of the tireless Transit Lounge as a support base for the artists. “[X-Press Shots] is a new program, and there are different young people who have come through,” Gwinner says. “So for us it’s a stepping back and looking at what we’ve done in the last six months and celebrating that,” she continues. “This is what young people are doing in the arts and this is how they see themselves.”
X-PRESS SHOTS: X-HIBIT opens on Wednesday 16 July with live performances at Transit Lounge Brisbane, located on Level 3, The Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, and continues Monday-Wednesday until August 12. For more information on the X-Press Shots Sessions, visit www.yaq.org.au/transitlounge
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