Footscray Community Arts Centre

Crowd Theory

Image: Crowd Theory Port of Melbourne. Photo by Simon Terrill © Footscray Community Arts Centre

In 2004, Footscray Community Arts Centre’s then CEO/Artistic Director Jerril Rechter and artist Simon Terrill came together to discuss ideas for an artistic project involving communities closely connected to Footscray Community Arts Centre and Melbourne’s West. The pair wanted to create a work that was not only about these communities, but that 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. Crowd Theory Footscray Station 2006 then followed, with Crowd Theory Southbank 2007 moving the project beyond the West to inner city Melbourne. In 2008 Crowd Theory Port of Melbourne became the latest edition to this hugely successful series.

Image: Crowd Theory Footscray. Photo by Simon Terrill © Footscray Community Arts Centre

Crowd Theory is concerned with how we imagine and inhabit the idea of community and as part of any Crowd Theory event, Simon Terrill undertakes extensive consultation and discussion to create an event and a photo that reflect the attitudes of the community to the area where the event is staged. 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’”.

Click here for You Tube video footage of a Crowd Theory shoot in action.

Image: Crowd Theory Southbank. Photo by Simon Terrill © Footscray Community Arts Centre