‘A mountain is once again a mountain’, Tacit Galleries, solo exhibition, 2023
The title for this show references a Zen teaching. A lesson which describes searching for the present, and arriving at a view which has always been here.
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 along with intricate prints on paper, to invite speculative encounters. At a glance these views read as naturalistic, however closer examination reveals an invented language of representation emerging at a point between mechanical process, and the poetic perspectives of Zen.
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, my work engages with processes of printerly reproduction, including the preparation and care applied to digital image information as it is prepared for printed output. Digital editing processes such as cropping, framing, colour separation, retouching, and image interpolation, combined with tactile printing methods like screenprinting, are utilised as investigative tools to reveal the often-hidden processes of image reproduction and transfer. By deliberately foregrounding the physical and technical aspects of image reproduction, this project seeks to reintroduce a tangible, material awareness to encounters with shared images and information transfer.
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.
