Questioning the values of established practice, I am a multimedia artist exploring new and unusual, exciting frameworks within photography. Specialising in painting previously, a sensitivity to the relationship with photography, drawing and painting is investigated through research and practice.

 

Current artworks explore the relationship between the digital self and past ideologies of the self in conjunction with previous means to represent such as early twentieth century photography. Through chasing this negation of rigid established frameworks, my photograms expanded to take up walls and room installations with some intent to invert the idea of a camera recording an outer reality on the inside, to being inside the camera recording itself.

 

The photoluminescent room installations do this well through its affordable price and easy application, allowing the surfaces of large environments to become photosensitive. Viewer interaction is essential for this concept to work, and audience members/ artists are invited to use the lights in the space to create representations onto the walls, thus being a device within the camera creating the image. One of the significant qualities of photoluminescent material is its ability to show representations for momentarily, as after it is charged by ultraviolet light, the energy is then released back into the environment as green light. It is therefore projected back to the artists, and a visual display of entropy is created, what is more, is the reaction this triggers in the artists, how they learn to use the medium and create new representations.

 

The experience caused by the receding representations negates the traditional concept of artworks having to last a long time and emphasises the now. This further rejects the commodification of art objects by being in a state of flux, a state of ephemeral temporality which opens up possibilities of significantly unique creations.

 

Exploring phenomena such as falling asleep, the mundane is turned on its head through changing the means to represent this. As humans try to quantify and understand everything, my work almost pokes fun at this and plays around with the paradox of representing objectively through employing methods such as laying photopaper which are highly impractical and will undoubtedly result in an artwork that predominantly points to its own existence rather than the qualia of consciousness.

 

Often referring to the paper as performing as it is left unfixed and reacts with the environment, the emphasis is put on the material means, not on the representations or what the representation points to objectively or scientifically. This is another negation of mimesis, a core part of art, timelessly, as images which demonstrate skill through copying precisely or claim to reveal something through a ‘realistic’ copy of the world (often flat) are abundantly floored through their existence as signifiers. This integral part of their being reduces their purpose by further grounding them in their being as objects attempting to mimic, rather than re-presenting the thing itself, the world. This inspires theses new frameworks within my practice where the emphases is attempted to be put further onto the art object through giving the medium agency and independence rather than an intended representational outcome. This still puts my art objects into the same black void as more sincerely mimetic art, but it feels as though I am moving closer to the thread which would unravel the whole thing, in this endless game of walking towards the abyssal horizon in which one does not cease to an impasse.

Photography | Silver-Gelatine Paper

20.5x15.5cm

Framed