EDWARD BENNETTS - VISUAL ARTIST
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ART, POETRY and VIDEO
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A work in progress 'white' video still - 'White' is about  family ritual and what is excpected from you as a child during rites of passage. It is a love of the generations past that then pass that mantle on to you as an adult. Click link to watch video - ww.youtube.com/watch?v=m84R5HFbvPk



                       
 stil from the video 'holy communion: 1967' Click on link to watch video - www.youtube.com/watch


am a Visual Artist that lives and works in the City of Sydney, NSW.  At present I mainly work in digital media, painting and words. I am also an Art Educator. 

I hope you enjoy the site.


                       
Stills from the video - 'holy communion:1967' Edward Bennetts
Click here to watch  -  www.youtube.com/watch
 
'First Holy Communion' is a series of images taken from a photographic 35mm slide my father had taken at my first holy communion when I was seven years old in 1967. I went through school with most of the boys in the photograph. Unfortunately like most of us, I have never seen my classmates since my school days. 

I worked the old fragmented slide in photoshop and created thirty images from the original slide and a short video. My father has now passed away but he has left  me a gift of his poignent and moving photographs. I am restoring the old slides and now recreating stories from my past. 

What is the intended meaning?
When I was an art student I studied and researched the film and montage work of the Russian propagandist film producer and director Sergei Eisenstein. I was always fascinated by his body of work. The hidden signs and symbols he weaved throughout his work. The filmic emotional and even gender ambiguities he displays in the silent films 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925) and 'Ivan the Terrible' (1944) creates artifice and a tension within the moving image or the still, capturing the essence of human emotional pain, or is it joy? Bernini the Baroque sculptor also captures the same human emotional ambiguities in the marble sculpture 'The Ecstasy of St. Teresa'

Some of the images in 'holy communion:1967' display the same hidden codes and symbols that take you to the 'Third Level' of meaning (beyond words and language). The visual implies or subverts the meaning. The video, music and stills are really just what they are; a montage, a joyous and happy day. The viewers own core beliefs and societal codes subvert the true meaning of the video. 

         [st-theresa-in-ecstasy-cornaro-chapel.jpg]
Bernini, 'Ecstasy of St. Teresa' 1647- 52


As you can see in the above video still images some display ambiguous aspects of ecstasy, joy and pain, which sub consciously can create a tension or visual and emotional crisis when interpreted by the viewer. In the essay 1970. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation, Roland Barhtes goes further and states that images have three levels -
  • An informational level.  This is the level of communication.
  • A symbolic level, the level of referential, historical, and  Eisensteinian symbolism, accessible not through a science of signs, but  through sciences of the symbol (for example, dramaturgy, psychoanalysis).
  • A third level, which "transcends psychology, anecdote, function," which Barthes will call signifiance.
        
stills from the silent movie by Sergei Eisenstein 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925)

The Third Meaning (Obtuse meaning)  is beyond aritculation or  meaning and sits in a psychologigal emotional state or diguise. 'holy communion:1967 has elements of the 'third meaning' which as stated previously subverts the viewers own codes and symbols or core beliefs. However, again, put simply they are still just images from a single snapshot of a happy and joyous day.



Untitled 'holy communion: 1967' (video still) 
Click to watch video - http://www.youtube.com/v/LI_j1mBU83M&hl=en_US&fs=1&border=1"></param><param


     
'White  Meditation' ceramic                  'Surfing Days: 1974' oil 1.4 x .8

      

'Mother and Child' bronze                    'Female Movement' bronze



Edward Bennetts 'Sydney Harbour Reflections' oil painting 2.7m x 1.8m



'windows' acrylic/charcoal

Video still  - CLICK HERE - www.youtube.com/watch 
'Alberto's Dream' New York City 1999



'canowindra grossi' acrylic (2 mt x 1.5 mt)


'Brown Canowindra' oil painting                                

Poetry:

'Surfing Days: 1974' (poetry page - work in progress)
Five surfers find themselves in mountainous perilous surf on a bombora south of Treachuery Beach.
Their lives are unknowingly intertwined as they discover their connections. Lives will be lost as the waves envelope their lives. 
 
'Erskineville Days:1976' (poetry page work in progress) is a poem about the time when I was a young factory/storeman in a migrant workforce. The work environment was aggressive, racist and sexist with a mix of clashing attitudes and cultural foibles.

The poem is set in the working class suburbs of St. Peters/Erskineville in 1976. The importing company was in Rochford St a seedy part of town, the building is no longer in existence. Neville Wran was in power in NSW. The Sowetto riots in South Africa dominated the news and hotted up orange Holden Torana was the young guys car of choice.

poetry page.....





'Blue Canowindra Grid' oil 1.740x1.4


Forbes Town Hall (oil)



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