Statement 2023

The Exhausted Image

 

‘Hyperreality refers simply to an image that has been altered from the thing it's supposed to represent or a replica of something that never actually existed.

Simulacrum A term from Greek Platonic philosophy that meant a copy of a copy of an ideal form.

In postmodernist thought, particularly through the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, the term has been revived in the context of arguments about the relationship between an original work of art and its replication. For Baudrillard the simulacrum takes precedence over the original, with the effect that the original is no longer relevant.’

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/simulacrum

 

Since the dawn of the internet the accessibility of information has accelerated to the point of overwhelming visual melt down. The constant stream of information and images feed into the voracious techno-documentation of the self.

The question is where the truth of what we see really lies? This practice is interested in theories such as ‘simulation’ and ‘hyperreality’ these offer a conflicting dynamic between notions of artificial and the real. These ideas are explored through images which are constructed using digital technologies and more recently expressed through traditional oil painting techniques, both mediums becoming increasingly entwined.

We are interested to investigate ways in which inanimate objects can trigger emotional responses and seem to hold a sense of presence or life.  Employing familiar everyday objects and combining them in unfamiliar and contradictory scenarios to explore the weird and strange through the notion of the uncanny.