Crowd Theory Southbank
We’ve added Crowd Theory Southbank to our ever expanding Crowd Theory collection. The fourth in this series of artworks was created on Thursday 26 April. Thanks to a partnership between the City of Melbourne and Footscray Community Arts Centre, the area around two inner city apartment buildings was transformed into one enormous photographic set, for artist Simon Terrill to shine the spotlight on the latest trend towards inner city living with Crowd Theory Southbank..
Crowd Theory is the brainchild of Footscray Community Arts Centre Director/CEO Jerril Rechter and artist Simon Terrill, who came together in 2004 to discuss ideas for an artistic project involving communities closely connected to Footscray Arts and Melbourne’s West. They wanted to create a work which was not only about those communities, but which was also a spontaneous creation by the communities themselves.
The result was Footscray 2004 and Braybrook 2004, two large-format photographs that have been exhibited around Australia and overseas. Footscray Station then followed in December 2006, with Crowd Theory Southbank, the fourth of the series, now moving the project beyond the West to inner city Melbourne.
In depicting large, loose groups of people, Crowd Theory recalls the paintings of 16th century Flemish painter Breughel. But each photo in the Crowd Theory series is more than a group portrait. Simon Terrill does not choreograph the participants like a film director, but waits to see whether they find their own synchronicity in a fine balance between design and spontaneity. “It’s really a collaboration.” he explains. “I just make a situation and people fill it however they want…I don’t say ‘that person in the blue jacket – you move over there’”.
The City of Melbourne has embraced the concept wholeheartedly and the Council’s Community Cultural Development Program has commissioned and co-produced Crowd Theory Southbank. Collaborating with residents from a number of high rise residential towers, the project is about strengthening connections for people living in the vertical context. The project will act as a catalyst for community building, facilitating new connections, building relationships and raising awareness about who lives in and around the neighbourhood.
The Crowd Theory Southbank photo will be exhibited together with Footscray Station at the ANZ Pavilion on 21 June, and at Footscray Community Arts Centre from Friday 22 June until Sunday 29 July.
You can check out Crowd Theory 1 + 2 here.
You can check out Crowd Theory Footscray Station here.
You can check out Crowd Theory Southbank here.
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