‘A mountain is once again a mountain’, Tacit Galleries, solo exhibition, 2023
The title for this show references a Zen teaching describing how perception can arise in different forms: understanding, confusion… and realisation.
In the beginning, mountains are mountains and waters are waters; then, mountains are no longer mountains and waters are no longer waters; finally, mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters
This exhibition presents image information in matricies of digital light coupled with intricate prints on paper. At a glance these views read as naturalistic, however closer examination reveals an invented syntax of representation emerging between the poetic perspectives of Zen and mechanical process.
Materially and conceptually Mountain considers how we might return to images in an age of ‘invisible delivery’ – where an industry of image reproduction has increasingly moved beyond thresholds of human perception.
To explore these issues, this work engages with processes of printerly reproduction, including the adjustments and care applied to image information as it is prepared for printed output. Digital editing processes such as cropping, framing, colour separation, retouching, and image interpolation, combined with the tactile processes of screenprinting, are utilised as investigative tools to reveal an often-hidden process of image reproduction and transfer. By visibly foregrounding physical and technical processes of reproduction, this project seeks to reintroduce a tangible, material awareness to encounters with shared images and information.
Representations of waters and mountains in this show mix found landscape images with interpolated versions of themselves, and utilise both digital and hand-crafted processes of image reproduction, as a methods to renegotiate the present.
