Monday, February 20, 2017

CCP

We were in the neighbourhood with no firm plans.

Most interesting were the pieces from James Tunks' Elsewhere series. As described by the website:

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Instead of photographing stars themselves, Tunks constructs the photographs using predominately found and accumulated material that is crushed and pulverized to mirror interstellar nebula. This process forms constellations between otherwise arbitrary materials whilst at the same time echoing the history of astrophotography and its pioneers such as Edwin Hubble and EE Barnard. 


Image: James Tunks, Crushed and pulverized 35mm Minolta wide angle lens, still photograph from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, aspirin migräne, coconut, viewfinder prism, paperback cover of Jorge Luis Borges ‘Labyrinths’, found hunting arrow, Icelandic flag sew on embroidered patch, ground espresso, page from Francois Laurelle’s ‘The Concept of Non Photography’, pistachio husks, photograph of lion paintings from Chauvets Cave, dried hibiscus, type-c print, 85cm x 130cm, courtesy the artist.

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The constituent material can't but intrigue and play out the drama of meaning-making (we seek out meaning; it emerges whether or not actually 'meant'; which is in the nature of meaning itself - maybe).

Some of the pieces in the 'Elegy to Apertures' exhibition also had a bit of an appeal, but more surface-aesthetically than in any deep way for me, despite the concept of the exhibition being about the interstitial or portal-like nature of the camera aperture and the way that it limns the taken image - both enabling and limiting and circumscribing it.

(w/ Trang)