My final piece is an abstraction, suggestion, representation and even perhaps provocation. It represents its location in such a manner that provokes the viewer into questioning and forming their own narratives around it. It represents a single location but points towards a larger context through the use of different angles and even slightly variations in tonal quality to provide three different representations of the space. Image 1, with its red scale tonality notably caused through the red spot on the wall, is a geometric based image, with striking horizontal and vertical lines providing what boarders on a more formal, constructional approach. It almost has a militaristic feel with the barbed wire fence, which points towards the buildings former usage as part of an airfield. Image 2 is far more dreamlike in its execution. The building appears to be imploding into itself which points towards ideas of this location being a former shell of what it used to be, and has the most obvious appearance of a layered image/double exposure. Image 3 sees the building interact most heavily with the countryside around it, with the shadow of the tree strongly emphasised on the building. This shadow is something of a motif within the work, along with the appearance of the long grass – it is present in every image and perhaps the most certain way the viewer can be sure that this is in fact three representations of the same building.
The layering technique used to create the images affords the work not only a dreamlike quality, but is the key factor to creating a sense of the passage of time within the work. They appear almost as long exposures where it is not the camera that shifts, but the landscape itself. This is especially evident in the second image.
The main set back when both creating and installing the work has been over-ambition. I based a number of key decisions on an ideal situation rather than the practicality of finishing the work to high standard. This has lead to some more technical based flaws such as imperfections in the woodwork, especially the frames, and the work still has a slightly home-made feel, despite the attempted switch to a more clean, clinical approach. Perhaps if this approach had been adopted in the first instance, the finished design could’ve been altered to achieve this to a higher standard. However, despite these issues and the degree of naïve determination employed, this was how the images had to be presented.
Displaying the prints on backlit film and on light boxes enhances not just the aesthetics, but also the intentions behind it. It heightens the dreamlike quality and the use of layering. The actual light boxes also afford the work a degree of weight and a certain degree of defiance – they remain concrete objects and it almost appears as if this is a world inside the box. The frames heighten this by separating the images from the space around them, not as to provide them with an elevated ‘artistic’ status, but to highlight their otherness. This is a real location, but in its presentation begins to become a nonplace. Its location is indiscernible, as its function, and perhaps even its significance. The warm tone of the lights themselves not only brings out the colour palette used within the images, but also provides an aged, almost nostalgic feeling to the work which allows a more evocative reading to take place than if a whiter light had been used, as this would’ve added a more clinical feeling to the work. This in turn would lead to a more detached reading.
During FMP1 I decided I wanted to carry forward the idea of creating open narratives within the work. I feel this is achieved here as the work is suggestive, not directive, and the viewer is invited to interpret it as they will. As Uta Barth writes, “there is always something that motivated the taking of a photograph,” which leads the viewer to attempt to identify the significance of the subject. My work is not pointing to a definitive reading but leaves space for the viewer to create their own narrative around the work.
The nature of the subject itself raises a number of questions which are never fully addressed within the work. The selection of images ensured that the building and its context within the surrounding landscape is never fully displayed – this leads the viewer to deconstruct the images in order to piece them together as a whole. This is then further complicated by the flipped final image, (although will never be known by simply viewing the work,) which then distorts any perspective gained from the first two images.
The Water Scissor Stepping Stone (WSSS) exhibition was an invaluable process in furthering the work. It proved that the light boxes needed to become a method of display rather than a feature of the work. By having white boxes, as tight to the wall and seamless as possible, and by the addition of a frame, the image is then free to function in its own right – it creates its own unique world within the space provided by the box. There is then room for the images to be interpreted in their entirety, whereas as at the WSSS exhibition the viewer’s attention was split between the image, the box, and the method of attachment, which lead to the images having far less impact.
I have left the work as Untitled to make the work as nondirective as possible. Although previously keen to title the work, it is mysterious in its nature and a concrete title would then detract from this sense of the unknown.
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