A Strange Appearance
Published
7-2-2024
Type of Work
Creative Work - Visual artwork
Project Affiliation
Sol Gallery
Abstract
This series of 25 prints explores what philosopher Timothy Morton calls the “strange strangeness” of perception in the Anthropocene. It evokes a sense of the ‘dark-uncanny’ which Morton postulates is a phase of ‘dark ecology’ as we pass from ‘dark-depressed’ to a ‘dark-sweet’ more hopeful perspective. My images begin with close-focused photography of urban gardens and are built up through layering multiple images over textures from abstract paintings, which in turn have resulted from obsessive layering. The process of construction and deconstruction inherent in this approach makes explicit the persistent trace of the human hand in the ‘natural’ in our precarious times. Here, one photogravure plate developed through these techniques is overprinted onto a selection of different pigment prints to create variants which change in colour and form as the two layers intersect. This play with multiple variations speaks to both possibility and mutation: the open and the determined aspects of change.
Notes
This project was exhibited as part of a group exhibition In the Space of Elsewhere, Sol Gallery Fitzroy 7 February - 18 February. Other artists Sophia Szilagyi, Angela Coombs Matthews, Sorcha Mackenzie, Silvi Glattauer (artist organiser curator)
Citation
O'Donnell, M. (2024) A strange appearance [Creative work]