Curating Icons: Tali Udovich On The Upcoming Blender Gallery Exhibition
As you may have seen via Instagram, on the Monster Children website or maybe even in your email inbox, we are hosting Icons, a photographic exhibition in collaboration with Blender Gallery at the Monster Children Gallery.
It’s a collaboration that only makes sense, we’re both Sydney locals who share the same passion and love for music and photography. Blender Gallery represents some of the greatest photographers and houses some of the greatest photographs in music history and you will be able to see it all on display in Icons. An incredibly fitting name for an exhibition that features some of the most iconic photos in music history, photos of music icons such as Nirvana, Blondie, Patti Smith, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Tupac and Run DMC. Shot through the lenses of the likes of Henry Diltz, Jesse Frohman, Duffy, and many more.
I called up Tali Udovich of Blender Gallery to talk more about the exhibition that she curated and get a taste of what we can expect.
The exhibition opens at the Monster Children Gallery on Thursday, June 27th from 5-9pm. Everyone is welcome. No RSVP is needed. It’s free to enter and will have food and drinks courtesy of our favorites, DRNKS, Young Henry’s, Jameson, and Beach Burrito. If you can’t make it on the opening night the show will be on view in the gallery until July 28th.
Patti Smith by Allan Tannenbaum. Debbie Harry by Brian Aris. Blondie by Allan Tannenbaum.
How did the exhibition come up?
It all came up through my friend Maclay Heriot who is a music photographer and has an awesome gig as the photographer for the band Portugal. The Man. Maclay did this exhibition at the Monster Children space on Danks street a few months ago, I went to check it out and had a big chat with him and asked, ‘What are they doing with this space when you aren’t having this exhibition here?’ and he said, ‘Nothing so you should do something here’. It is such a cool space, and I was immediately into the idea of trying to put something on. Maclay put me in touch with them and we went on from there.
My space in Redfern is right around the corner but it is more of a showroom. I can do exhibitions there, but it is small. When I was at Monster Children, I thought it would be cool to do a feature show here that is nice and big and encompassed forty plus images. We’ve got a few more ideas coming up in the future, but this is where we’re going to start with this exhibition which is a mix of iconic images. We are running it as a full exhibition, it’s on for a month and everything is for sale. It’s set up as a little Blender Gallery over there at Monster Children.
Oh, that’s perfect. I feel like it only makes sense to work together.
Yeah, when we all sat down to talk about it, we were like ‘Why haven’t we done this before’. It just makes so much sense. We are on the same wavelength with everything, it’s really nice. We have been doing this for almost the same time, Monster Children is 20 and Blender is 23 and they’ve done stuff with my photographers but nothing with Blender as such. It
What can you say about the exhibition?
It is a real cross section of what I call the ‘Greatest Hits Collection’, it is works that people have seen before and will probably recognise, works that are famous and iconic in rock n roll photography and culture. I have also recently taken on some new photographers who I haven’t been able to showcase and unseen photos from old photographers, as they’re always digging into their archives, so stuff people haven’t seen before there are some nice proof sheets and some more intimate works.
Tupac by Danny Clinch
Who are some of the people featured in the photographs?
The photographs feature the likes of The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Patti Smith, Blondie, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, to hip hop icons like Tupac, Run DMC.
When we’ve spoken about your collection in the past I’ve always been really intrigued. What is the history of Blender Gallery and music photography?
Blender Gallery started as a photographic gallery space in June 2001. I wanted to give up and coming photographers who didn’t have a space to show their work an opportunity to showcase in a commercial gallery. That worked really well, and we developed this reputation of showcasing all things that were going on in photography in Sydney.
I have a massive passion for music, I was a teenager when the whole grunge scene started and that was my big entry into finding my own music tastes. Music has always been a driving force for my life, then in 2007 I had an opportunity to do an exhibition with Merri Cyr who was Jeff Buckley’s official photographer. She contacted me out of the blue and wanted to showcase her work in the gallery. We flew her over, had a show and it made me realise this is the way I wanted to take Blender, purely specialising on music and popular culture photography.
Dolly Partn and Mick Jagger by Allan Tannenbaum. Amy Winehouse by Jake Chessum.
Now you’re representing a long list of photographers, did that start as soon as you had the exhibition with Merri Cyr?
Yeah, I started to reach out from that point, contacting a lot of different photographers. It has been a work in progress because you have to build trust with them to sell their work over here. I just kept pushing and pushing and it’s got to the point where I have been able to represent all the photographers that I wanted. It was kind of a dream in a way.
Do you have anything else about the exhibition you want to say?
I am really grateful that this opportunity has arisen, it is a nice new time for Blender and Monster Children, with our little collaboration. We have some great upcoming projects we can work on, and I hope this is the start of many. I also want to thank Rachel and Campbell for welcoming me in, Maclay for suggesting I contact them and all of my photographers who are always willing to participate in everything I throw at them.
The Clash by Allan Tannenbaum