A Surrealist Feeling
The exhibition, A Surrealist Feeling, is a response to the upheaval of the past few years. As the world and our lives turned upside down, 'normal’ imagery started to feel inadequate, unequal to the task of representing this state of being. This recalled last century’s surrealist art movement, also born in a time of dislocation, and it became a reference that begat this new strangeness as a way to reveal the world as is currently written.
By making the familiar strange again, by tapping into dreamscapes and giving them human form, and by using surrealist photography techniques such as displacement, doubling, and distortion, I try to remove the boundaries by which concepts inform reality. Because reality, as we knew it, splintered and dissolved a few years ago.
Across three bodies of work – Bone Soup, I Am Here, and Opening a Door - I reflect on my engagement with everyday objects both on their own and in their interaction with people. I have always been fascinated by windows, the obscuring of people behind glass, or framed by a rectangle in the distance, and the narrative that it can lead to in your imagination. Blur and magnification, picking out an element from commonplace phenomena and objects, are also common themes in my photography. My current work takes this fascination further by using the distortion of glass and fragmentation of broken mirrors as a frame, to create a new window inviting the viewer to become part of the creation, tap into their stories, dreams, and fantasies, and layer them onto the photographs.
My work is informed by my background in fashion and an abiding interest in the power of ordinary objects, and my inspirations range from books, poetry, fashion, and film. This roster includes photographers Man Ray, Tim Walker, and Elizaveta Porodina as well as the poetry of John Cage, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, the short stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner, and the films of David Lynch.
Since the exhibition is in effect a dialogue, the opening too is planned as one. Setting up a conversation with the curator and the photographer that tries to explore the underpinnings of surrealism, the unconscious mind, and the power of dreams.
