Artist talk & exhibition tour: JP Willis & Tim Page (Free Entry)

Join us on Saturday 4 July for an artist talk with JP Willis, followed by an exhibition tour of ‘Tim Page: The very edge of the brightest light’.

We’ll start at 11am in QCAD’s Webb Gallery for a tour of ‘Love is in the air’ and a Q&A with artist JP Willis.

We’ll then walk across the lawn to GUAM, for an exhibition tour of ‘Tim Page: The very edge of the brightest light’, led by Tim’s partner Marianne Harris and exhibition curators Carrie McCarthy and Dr Amy Carkeek.

WHEN: Saturday 4 July, 11am – 12.30pm
WHERE: Webb Gallery | Griffith University Art Museum, 226 Grey Street South Bank QLD 4101
COST: Free! Please RSVP

JP Willis: Love is in the air

Love is in the air examines the ethics of visibility and delay, camouflage as both material and metaphor, and how violence is obscured, aestheticised, and acceded. Elements such as bejewelled fences and barbed wire suggest both seduction and threat. Patterned forms offer a sense of ritual and repetition, while also recalling tactics in conflict – ordered, systematic, and deadly.

This iconography is also a reminder of our cultural fascination with violence as mediated through television and film, and over the last few years Willis worked closely with the well-known war photographer Tim Page OAM (1944-2022). The two were working on an exhibition of responses to each other’s practices at the time of Page’s death.

Originally from Llandudno in North Wales, JP Willis now lives and works on Gumbaynggirr Country, in the hinterland of Coffs Harbour. A past winner of Southern Cross University’s Acquisitive Artists’ Book Award and an Australia Print Council commission, his work is held in major collections internationally (e.g., Tate Britain, British Library, Columbia University), and nationally (e.g., Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Library of Australia, State Library of Queensland), and regional Australian collections. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Masters in Printmaking from the University of the West of England Bristol.

Tim Page: The very edge of the brightest light

Tim Page OAM (1944-2022) was one of the most vivid personalities among a group of Vietnam War photographers whose images appeared in publications around the world and helped shape public opinion and policy regarding conflict. Self-taught, he became a celebrated freelancer noted for his work covering dangerous situations globally that other journalists were reluctant to cover. He was the basis for the photographer character played by Dennis Hopper in Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Apocalypse Now’ and was wounded four times – the most serious requiring extensive neurosurgery after a piece of shrapnel pierced his brain.

In the 1970s Page worked as a ‘gonzo’ photojournalist, covering the drug-fueled world of rock, hippies and Vietnam veterans for music magazines such as Rolling Stone, and returned regularly to Vietnam after the war to shoot assignments and run workshops. In 2002, Page relocated to Australia and was appointed an Adjunct Professor in Photojournalism at the Queensland College of Art & Design, Griffith University.

He covered uprisings in the Asia Pacific and, on behalf of the University’s Institute for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, travelled to the Solomon Islands alongside journalist Mark Dodd to document the ADF’s Regional Assistance Mission ‘Operation Anode’. In 2009, he served as the UN’s Photographic Peace Ambassador in Afghanistan, a title created especially for him. In his later years Page lived on the mid-north-coast of New South Wales with his partner Marianne.