RMIT Gallery, RMIT Storey Hall, 344 Swanston St, Melbourne

Until January 26

The work of photographer Christopher Köller is intriguing in the most of simple ways.

Through photography and video he has recorded Japanese surfers riding waves and enjoying life. The Australia Council’s Tokyo Studio was Köller’s home in 2003, and Floating Worlds grew out of his time there. The simplicity of this sub-cultural surfing lifestyle is captured in large photographic prints of people posing for the camera in a blend of self-consciousness and inhibition.

The photographs are mounted directly onto the wall, surrounding you as you walk though the gallery space. On some of the walls are images of the advertising billboards used to attract Japan’s surfing subculture. Video installations are placed in two of the gallery’s rooms, projected on each wall, bringing to life the subjects in the photographs.

One particularly fascinating element of this video and photographic investigation is the striking difference between the featured surf beach in Japan, Chigasaki Beach, and beaches in Australia. In Köller’s video, one watches the surfers walk across black sand and paddle out in the water surrounded by industrial debris, a grey sky in the background. Despite this bleak environment, the absolute freedom the surfers experience when riding a wave is palpable. Nowhere is this captured more than in the video piece in which Köller interrogates some of the surfers about why they surf. It’s a fresh piece of video work that captures the surfers laughing, getting embarrassed, showing off and essentially expressing a real love of their lifestyle.

Another video work in this exhibition captures the hustle and bustle of Japan over six continuous hours of people meeting up and passing outside Tokyo’s Shibuya Railway Station. Köller lets his lens fall on those around him in a subtle yet engaging way. He lets the effects, the nuances, emerge from the people in his works.

Floating Worlds is a poetic meditation on the transient world we live in.  

www.rmit.edu.au/rmitgallery

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Title
Comment	smaller | bigger
Name
Email
Website
Write the displayed characters
Subscribe via email (Registered users only) I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.
	Add Comment