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Robert Ashton (1950) is an Australian photographer and photojournalist.
Robert Ashton was born on August 11, 1950, in Melbourne. He studied Photography at Prahran College 1969-71 and graduated with a Diploma of Visual Arts and Design.
In the early 1970s, Robert Ashton shared house with Carol Jerrems and Ian Macrae in Mozart Street, St Kilda,[1] their artist associates being Ingeborg Tyssen, Paul Cox and Bill Heimerman, and Ashton's cousin Rennie Ellis with whom he shared a studio[2] in Greville Street, Prahran. From 1974 to 1981,[3] Ashton was assistant director at Ellis's Brummels Gallery in Toorak Road, South Yarra,[4][5] where he also exhibited.[6]
Photography curator Judy Annear notes that;
"Robert Ashton's work is typical of the highly personalised documentary photographs that began to emerge in the 1970s."[7]
His subject matter includes urban indigenous, life and incidents in inner suburbia in Melbourne,[8] particularly Fitzroy.[9][10] Writer and musician Mark Gillespie, who had become involved in a new publishing venture, Outback Press, with Fred Milgrom Colin Talbot and Morry Schwartz, commissioned Ashton for the book Into the Hollow Mountain. Its images,[11] of "kids on the prowl, the old Salvo street bands, the Koorie clans, the card joint kaphenois",[12] were first shown at Brummels in an exhibition of that title in 1974, and when re-exhibited forty years later at Colour Factory, "serve as a rare documentation of day-to-day Melbourne and glimpse into an era that, while not actually all that distant, is most definitely a thing of the past."[13]
Ashton has published several other books, of portraits and close-up, abstracted landscape, and exhibited widely in Australia. His photograph Bernard Diving[14] featured in the 1988 exhibition, and on the cover its catalogue, The Thousand Mile Stare, a survey of Australian photography published by the Victorian Centre for Photography.[15]
In pursuing the best quality output for his imagery, Ashton adopted, and currently uses, hand-built large format cameras and advanced printing techniques including photogravure and the Collodion process.[16]
He lives on Victoria's Surf Coast, and imagery of the ocean and landscape is a consistent interest.
Solo
- 1973 Faces and Places, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne
- 1974 Into the Hollow Mountains: A Portrait of Fitzroy, Brummels Gallery[17]
- 1976 Between Light and Dark, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney
- 1976 Between Light and Dark, Brummels Gallery, Melbourne
- 1979 Adventures in Paradise? Church Street Photographic Centre, Melbourne[18]
- 1987 Adventures in Paradise?, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.[19]
- 1987 Photogravure Images, United Artists Gallery, Melbourne.
- 1990 What are you Doing? What are you Saying?, Luba Bilu Gallery, Melbourne
- 2000 Hidden Things, Qdos Gallery, Lorne
- 2001 Life Sanctuary, Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne
- 2003 Different Dreams-Same Reality, Patricia Autore Gallery, Melbourne
- 2005 Evidence, Little Malop Gallery, Geelong
- 2006 Visual Instinct, Libby Edwards Gallery - Melbourne
- 2007 Recognition, Pigment Gallery, Prague
- 2009 Snapshots from the edge, Qdos Gallery, Lorne
- 2009 Photographs from the edge, Monash Gallery of Art
- 2012 Postmortem, Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne
- 2013 Interior/Exterior, Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne
- 2014 Into The Hollow Mountains, Colour Factory Gallery, Melbourne[20][10]
- 2014 Interior/Exterior + Postmortem gravures, Black Eye Gallery, Sydney[21]
- 2015 Thin Air, Qdos Gallery, Lorne
- 2015, 6 Aug - 29 Aug; Thin Air, Colour Factory Gallery, 409-429 Gore St, Fitzroy[22]
- 2021, 3–25 Apr, Bush Theatre, Qdos Gallery, Lorne
Group
- 1982 Ray Hughes Gallery, Brisbane.
- 1988 The Thousand Mile Stare, Victorian Centre for Photography[15]
- 1988 Artery Gallery, Geelong.
- 1990 Qdos Gallery, Lorne. 1990
- 1991 Special . . . It's Been Used Before, Luba Bilu Gallery.
- 1991 Survey - A Regional Review, Geelong Art Gallery.
- 1998 Waterproof, Centro Cultural de Belem, Lisbon Portugal.[23]
- 2003 Australian Photographic Portrait Prize, Art Gallery of NSW.
- 2007 Ulrich and Schubert Photography award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery
- 2007 Bowness Photography prize, Monash Gallery of Art.[24]
- 2010 Bowness Photography prize 2010, Monash Gallery of Art.
- 2011 Ulrich and Schubert Photography award, Gold Coast City Art Gallery.
- 2020, 31 October 2020 – 7 February 2021 Bowness Photography prize 2020, Monash Gallery of Art.
- Hallmark Cards Collection, National Gallery of Australia[25]
- National Gallery of Victoria[26]
- Phillip Morris Collection, Australian National Gallery
- Art Gallery of New South Wales
- Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery
- John Sands Collection
- Charles Darwin University
- Ashton, Robert; Gillespie, Mark (1974), Into the hollow mountains, Outback Press, ISBN 978-0-86888-006-8
- Park, Andy; Smolan, Rick (1981), A day in the life of Australia, A Day in the life of Australia Pty Ltd, ISBN 978-0-9594244-0-9[27]
- Smolan, Rick; Park, Andy; O'Loughlin, Peter (1983), A day in the life of Victoria, DITLA, ISBN 978-0-9594244-3-0
- Bennett, David; Agee, Joyce; Victorian Centre for Photography (1988), The thousand mile stare : a photographic exhibition, The Victorian Centre for Photography Inc, ISBN 978-0-7316-2054-8
- Crombie, Isobel; Byron, Sandra; National Gallery of Victoria (1990), Twenty contemporary Australian photographers : from the Hallmark Cards Australian Photographic Collection, National Gallery of Victoria, ISBN 978-0-7241-0142-9
- Ashton, Robert; Day, Gregory (2003), Trace, Merrijig Word & Sound Co, ISBN 978-1-74066-109-6
- Blackmore, Paul; Malouf, David, 1934-; Juan Davila collection (1999), Australians : responses to the land, St Martin Press, ISBN 978-0-646-37815-2
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)[28] - Calado, Jorge; Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbon, Portugal); 100 Days Festival ((1998 : Lisbon, Portugal)) (1998), Waterproof : water in photography since 1852 ([Hardcover ed.] ed.), Edition Stemmle, ISBN 978-3-908161-26-4
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Crombie, Isobel; Blainey, Geoffrey, 1930-; National Gallery of Victoria (1992), Sites of the imagination : contemporary photographers view Melbourne and its people (English language ed.), National Gallery of Victoria, ISBN 978-0-7241-0161-0
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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