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Photography and Installation: Patti Smith

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

9-25 October 2008
Anna Schwartz Gallery
185 Flinders Lane, St Kilda

Patti Smith's love affair with photography started when, as a young artist of just 20 years old, she was beckoned from the suburbs of New Jersey across the Hudson to the blinding lights of New York. It was 1967, and the next few years of embedding herself in poetry and collaborating with musicians and writers in the burgeoning punk scene would lead to a career that, throughout the following decades, would rival few in contemporary music. Time and again through it all, she had her camera.

At the Melbourne International Arts Festival, a selection of Smith's work taken from 1967 to 2007 is being exhibited at the Anna Schwartz Gallery, along with an installation work created especially for the festival. The images evoke the type of harsh beauty so often associated with Smith's lyrics; black-and-whites of haunting landscapes, a glimpse of a self-portrait. Some serve to document particular items that have held a personal meaning for her; one is of Robert Mapplethorpe's slippers, another of Virginia Woolf's bed.

2008's festival is sure to be a treat for Patti-philes. At the Hamer Hall Smith performs her only Australian shows; filmmaker Steven Sebring premieres Dream of Life, his documentary on Smith 11 years in the making; and composer Philip Glass joins her in paying respects to Beat poet and friend in Dedication to Allen Ginsberg.

Kilian David

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