Amelia Johannes
All works by Amelia Johannes, 2015, Digital collage. Images courtesy of the artist. Original material courtesy of Argus Newspaper Collection of Photographs, State Library of Victoria and Herald & Weekly Times Limited portrait collection.
“…[R]ituals are composed of symbols. A ritual is a stereotyped sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects…”[1]
My research interests lie in how tradition is defined and how rituals are formed. The experimental works I create are visual explorations into researched ideas and reconstructions of found materials, as a means of investigating shared memories, lived tradition, patterns, perceptions, sameness and difference.
Nuances of Gesture is a creative exploration into how sport is perceived. The series of photographic collages visually explore the social tradition of sport as a national custom, the sameness of athletic gesture as a pattern and components of sport as signifiers of ritual.
The gesture: the jump, the leap, the throw, the catch, and the stride are common athletic mannerisms that showcase the technique of the sportsman. These forms of athleticism are significant aspects of sport as a social custom and national ritual.
The object: the javelin, the hurdle, the vault, the baseball mitt, and the running track are examples of familiar equipment and props in the ritual of the game. The athlete’s use of the sport equipment identifies with the particular object’s use in cultural traditions.
The athlete: the style, the routine, the strategy, the strength, and the intensity are recognizable athletic traits of a competitor witnessed by the spectator. The sportsman’s method is a repeated tradition of the game that is identifiable as a practiced custom defining the athlete in the lived experience of national sporting traditions.
The spectator: the viewer, the commentator, the amateur, the fan, and the barracker are possible positions of the viewer. The ritual of sport is a social custom shared by society as an everyday tradition. The spectator can identify with the purpose of a specific sporting equipment, the particular movement of the athlete, the heroic nature of the sportsman and the shared memory of the sporting activities.
The collaged images reinterpret found monochrome photographs to concentrate on repeated patterns. The original photographs have been rearranged to highlight observations of sameness as a connection drawn through each photograph. The join between each image focuses on the similarity of each gesture, movement or formal quality in order to reveal the difference of each athletic activity. The final series explores the gesture, the object, the athlete and the spectator as symbols of sport as an everyday ritual.
[1] Turner, Victor. ‘Symbols in African Ritual’, Science, 179, 1973, 1100 – 1105.
Amelia Johannes is a visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Johannes’ practice explores identity, uncertainty, memory and tradition. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, her artworks are influenced by research into identity, migration, lived tradition, cultural heritage and anthropology.
Johannes recently completed her Master of Fine Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She has presented solo exhibitions at Firstdraft gallery, Sydney, Propaganda Window, Melbourne and Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Selected group exhibitions and festivals include Simulacrum, Elysium Gallery, Wales, Playheads, Alliance Française de Melbourne, Tele Visions, Sydney, Tele Visions Afterlude at EXPERIMENTA, RMIT Gallery, Gertrude Street Projection Festival, Fitzroy, Nite Art festival, Melbourne, Australian International Experimental Film Festival, Human Rights Arts & Film Festival and Filmideo, New Jersey. ameliajohannes.com