The David Campany Workshop
(written at Geneve Aeroport on 24th September, whilst waiting for my flights home)
The David Campany Workshop - Santorini Greece Sept 2023.
At the beginning of 2023 I made the decision to sell our home, something that happened just before my 60th birthday.I was fortunate enough to get slightly more than expected, which was wonderful considering what was going to happen with interest rates. This allowed me to put money into super but also have a small amount spare to go on an adventure! My son was now in Melbourne at Uni, so within a few weeks I had researched and booked my adventure!
The first 12 days were spent in Greece. Three days in Athens and 9 nights in a vile called Akrotiri in Santorini. I also attended the Rencontres d'Arles festival for a week, and also had a few days in Lausanne at Photo Elysee. I have mentioned those in my instagram feed.
The first delightful thing that happened was meeting up with Penelope Hunt from Melbourne who is an artist using cyanotype, photography and video exploring memory, loss and grief in her Phd about her mother’s swimming pool. You can see more here. Penny and I have met before a couple of times but only briefly. The first few jet-lagged days were hilarious as we attempted to hold clever conversations but our brain’s weren’t cooperating… Words failed, laughter ensued!
It was so good to know were we going to be roomies at the David Campany Santorini workshop!
We sailed on the ferry which was the fast one (apparently), but it took hours! Upon seeing the island greeting the boat, I was speechless… (its just like you see on ‘instagram’). Driving to Marilena and Stella’s home on the southern part of the island I was shocked to see the scale of it but also of the amount of the traffic. The geography of the island is harsh, dry, dusty, mountainous in parts and white! The light is so different to Australia; softer even during the middle of the day, though it was good to have my sunnies with me!
I had the cave studio at the premises and Penny shared the cave house with Shai from the UK. We were a good fit!
We had a day before it officially started and we were very lucky to be taken by Stella to a local beach and swam. The UV factor in Europe is a fraction of Australian sun so even though we were all out in the sun, we didn’t get burnt. My friend Harry calls it the “diesel layer” (!)
We had a lovely welcome dinner with everyone when they arrived: Penelope Thomaidi, Penelope Hunt, Francesca Giaitzoglou, Shai Chrishty, Marilena and Stella Safyliodou and David Campany, our teacher, mentor…
Shai was late arriving so it was wonderful to meet her the next morning.
David Campany according to his website “is a curator, writer, broadcaster and educator. Renowned for his rigorous and accessible writing, exhibitions, public speaking, and organisation of ambitious team projects, David has worked worldwide with institutions including MoMA New York, Tate, Whitechapel Gallery London, Centre Pompidou, Le Bal Paris, ICP New York, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Photographer’s Gallery London, ParisPhoto, PhotoLondon, The National Portrait Gallery London, Aperture, Steidl, MIT Press, Thames & Hudson, and MACK.
David has also written for The New Yorker, The Times, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, Frieze, Tate Magazine, Aperture, Source, and FOAM.”
Thought to us, now, he is a friend! (hopefully not too presumptuous to say!)
The workshop ran as thus:
Day 1 Intros, both David and us,
Day 2 Scale and Materiality
Day 3 Editing and sequencing for wall and book
Day 4 Writing about your work
Day 5 …. And our presentations
This workshop was not one where the participants went out each day to make work (although I did), it was more about learning from a highly experienced academic, curator, writer and photographer. We were shown work that David has curated and written about but also work that the organisations he has worked for and works with now work.
David was accessible, warm, affable, articulate and extremely knowledgeable but for me I was impressed in the way he thinks tangentially, like a sailor changing tack to get better results.
I also learned so much from the other women (and yes they were all women, which was a lovely dynamic!), listening to their extremely diverse practices, from Shai’s highly academic and intellectual exploration of Muslim women, the veil and Orientalism, to Francesca’s beautifully personal work exploring her dual nationality. Penelope Thomaidi’s enormously intensive research, writing, photography and activism about cross border relationships about the local oil extractions in Greece and Albania. Such an impressive project. In fact fact to call it a ‘project’ does not give it justice. Penelope Hunt was attending to help her advance her beautifully poetic work about her mother’s swimming pool which has been left unattended for 17 years and has become a ‘ruin’ but cultivated by nature. So beautiful.
The main reason I applied to attend was to have time to ‘think’ about my photography and photography in general; to maybe create a body of work from work I am making and to make my work more cohesive. I definitely also wanted to learn a little bit about how to write about my work.
It was David’s first ever workshop and good on Marilena for convincing him to do it. I know we all felt so lucky to be his first! The joy of staying at the residence was immersive and there would be many times where we would talk and learn amongst ourselves…. I loved that we had time to explore the area, too; to swim, to eat local fish (boop boop!) to eat homemade tomato balls, stuffed tomatoes, gorgeous cake, yoghurt, tzatziki. I loved walking in the morning light. Swimming in the Aegean was a lovely surprise, so salty there was hardly a need to tread water! I was buoyant; literally and metaphorically speaking.
There were fun times, egg girl, the gay nudist beach walk, the lovely lunches, the gelato, the Sunday church bells…did I mention the light?
Sadly it was hunting season so that was not the best for the dear birds! It was quite confronting hearing the gunshots and I did see a bird hit the ground.
So, as I sit in the noisy Macca’s restaurant in Geneva airport it all seems years ago, but it will be something I remember for the rest of my life but also something that was a transformative experience, artistically. I have always wanted to do a masters and possibly a PhD, and with the help of these wonderful group of people I will be approaching the ANU when I get home.
So thanks to the wonderful women who attended! Penny, Penelope, Shai and Francesca, It was a joy.
Penny, I will see you in Melbourne!
Marilena and Stella, your warmth and hospitality was over and above. Loved the laughs, the food, your home!
David, you should come to Melbourne and do your talk in person! It’s not that far! It was so good to listen, absorb, learn, discuss and have you help me with my work… as someone who is outwardly quite confident, inwardly I am creatively shitting myself (technical term!), you made me feel I could actually do it! Thank-you
