Grounded

Abstract

The touring exhibition Grounded, curated by Anne Mcneill, consisted of 24 large scale pictures from two bodies of work.

The first series of "animal landscapes" were an exploration of the embodied landscape where the photographed backs of taxidermy specimens were collaged in the computer with photographs of skies to produce a seamless landscape. This challenge to our ideas of the picturesque also embodied a key research question running through all my work which is: How can a territory which might be identified with the feminine be depicted through images of landscape, without the work falling into the essentialist position of woman as landscape?

The second body of work was titled 'Still, A Landscape in Ten Parts' and was featured with the first in Portfolio Magazine 35. (8 Pictures, text by John Slyce ISSN 1354-4446) and also in "Stilled" Contemporary Still Life Photography by Women, edited by Kate Newton and Christine Rolph (2006) ISBN 1 872771 61 0.

The ten images that make up the series 'Still…' are all extracted from one medium-format negative of an alpine diorama shot in the museum of natural history in Darmstadt. Disrupting the consumption of the "whole" scene, tactics have been employed to relocate the viewer and focus on individual dramas and communicative exchanges amongst the different animals. The process of enlarging each fragment to 48x48inches for exhibition resulted in a breaking up or "noise" on the surface of the photograph which served as a potential for the re-animation of the taxidermy specimens. "The results are scenes alive with activity where multiple acts unfold on a stage that never escapes being haunted by the shadow of a crime." "Natural’s not in It" John Slyce , Portfolio, 35.

Press: The Guardian :August 21st 2003. "Beauty and the Beast: Alfred Hickling