Jim Anderson: Over-Development- A Question of Balance
Image: SOCIAL EMERGENCIES NO. 24 by Jim Anderson. Image: supplied
Since the times of Goya, artists have been intrinsically involved in comment on political events, and Sydney based photographer and collage artist Jim Anderson’s work has been founded in political comment since his time in the sixties and seventies as art director of Oz magazine.
These days in his mid-eighties and having been a resident of the Waterloo Estate for around 10 years, witnessing the difficult gestation of the nearby Waterloo Metro towers has inspired Anderson’s latest and most overt political comments in recent years.
“I became interested in Waterloo Metro as I can see it from my balcony and I had never been that close to a construction site before,” Jim Anderson, artist said.
“The buildings were meant to be finished before the trains started and now the station is finished and the buildings are not, and that is what I have been photographing.”
Anderson currently has 24 works in his “Over Development – A Question of Balance” show at Redfern’s Rogue Popup Gallery, consisting of photographs that have been assembled into digitally printed collages.
“The thing that I noticed is that there is nothing very colourful going on except for the workmen in their hi-viz vests, so I have upped the prints to match the workmen,” Anderson said.
Using local digital printer, Richard Crampton of Darkstar Digital, Anderson pushed the printer to take the challenge to saturate the images way past naturalistic tones.
“And that explains why all my A2 images have this super-saturated colour scheme,” Anderson said.
Using art for political comment was not new to Anderson who describes it as just an extension of his professional history.
“Even when I was the art director of Oz magazine I was always at the centre of things in London but had always been on the periphery of politics,” Anderson said.
“The “School-kids” edition was what led to the Oz Trials, which was crazy as the whole edition was put together by school-kids.”
That 1970 edition of Oz magazine would see Anderson, Richard Neville and Felix Dennis charged with obscenity for its cover depicting a naked woman, collaged by Anderson.
“As it was at the printers I got a call saying that they could make the lady stand out more by printing it blue against white,” Anderson said.
“I think that it would draw as much comment today as then.”
Anderson is now hoping that his show will draw attention to the Inequities of the Waterloo development and how it will not address lack of housing during any stage of its planned 15 years of construction.
“We will need much more public housing over the 15 years and it doesn’t make sense not to increase the levels now,” Anderson said.
Anderson’s show is not all doom and gloom; much of it is whimsical and colourful. It will no doubt add to the comments on one of Sydney’s most controversial and ill-planned developments.
Jim Anderson: Over Development – A Question of Balance
