BACKING A WINNER

 

 

The BIFB had it's first major public presence at the Ballarat Race Course for Gold Nugget day yesterday, with an exhibition of works from DFB 05 and DFB 07, plus a selection of images from the MAP Group's 'Making Hay' project. [MAP - many Australian photographers - are planning a 'day in the life of' style project on Ballarat which will show as part of the Core Program at BIFB 09. The exhibition was accompanied by an audio visual presentation of images from invited BIFB 09 Core Exhibition Program artists which ran as a looped show throughout the day. The initiative was done in conjunction with Commerce Ballarat, and was designed to showcase the festival to Ballarat businesses who attended the Commerce. Ballarat race day function.

BIENNALE MOVES TO BALLARAT

Festival Director Jeff Moorfoot, Ballarat CEO Anthony Schink, Ballarat Mayor Stephen Jones and DFB President Julie Millowick at the press call to announce the move at the Ballarat Mining Exchange

 

At a media release at the Ballarat Mining Exchange, DFB President Julie Millowick, in conjunction with the City of Ballarat, announced that the next biennale, planned for Daylesford in September 2009 would be relocating to Ballarat. The offer to stage the Festival in Ballarat comes with strong support from the City, with seed funding, wonderful venues in the Ballarat Art and Culture precinct, office space and funding and marketing support.

 We had taken the festival from nothing to International recognition over the space of just two festivals, and to continue the exponential growth we needed to move to a larger population centre. Whilst Daylesford and the other small towns in the Hepburn Shire had a fairly unique attraction, widespread venues, lack of dedicated gallery spaces, poor public transport access and difficulties attracting substantial sponsorship were all factors that were taken in to account when the board made their decision to relocate the festival. That said, we hope Daylesford, Creswick, Trentham and Clunes will continue to host Fringe events as part of BIFB 09.

$2000 Chillout 2008 Photography Prize

Great turnout at the Woodshed Gallery for the launch and announcement of the winner of the ChillOut 2008 Photography Prize. A crowd of around 80, including DFB committee members, ChillOut committee members,  and shortlist panel judges Chrissie Smith and Renee Ludekens, heard DFB President Julie Millowick [also a shortlist panel judge along with the DFB's Ellie Young] announce Fiora Sacco from Sydney as the winner of the $2000 prize as selected by our final judge Rob Imhoff. Unfortunately Rob had to return to the city for a prior family engagement, but he dropped in just prior to the launch on his way back to Melbourne from the farm at Kingston. The inaugural ChillOut Photography Prize, which was born out of an invitation by ChillOut President Jim Culbertson for the DFB to stage a photographic event in our off year that would keep our profile up whilst adding another dimension to the ChillOut program. I have to say that the response in terms of entries for the Prize didn't live up to our expectations, but nonetheless there  was  sufficient quality in the entries we received to mount an attractive show from the shortlisted works.  Judge Rob Imhoff also wanted to acknowledge two works which came close to winning the prize.  Both were from local artists - Tim Burder's "Everbody Loves a Parade" and Libby O'Brien's "On the way Homo".

I guess we need to sit down and discuss if we will do a ChillOut Prize again next year - we still haven't committed to another Biennale in 2009 - but if we do, I would hope that we can increase the value of the prize , and perhaps not have a theme, which it appears was a hurdle too difficult for some photographers who wanted to enter but couldn't come up with a concept to fit the theme [a photographer without ideas - bit like a fish who's not a very good swimmer!]

Finally, we need to thank Gerard Bugden from the Woodshed Gallery for the use of his wonderful space. Gerard has been a strong supporter of the DFB from the outset, hosting shows at both DFB05 and DFB07.

And finally, if you didn't enter because you didn't know about the Prize, get on ourr email list via the website so that you don't miss out on future announcements  regarding the Daylesford Foto Biennale and all things photographic

Chillout 2008 Photography Prize winner "Our Time" © Fiora Sacco

Highly Commended "On the way Homo"  © Libby O'Brien

Highly Commended "Everybody Loves a Parade" © Tim Burder