Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Liverpool Hope University : B - Drama
Antarctica (1)911
A triptych of large performed photographs, commissioned and exhibited originally for the Conference of European Philosophy in September 2011. Subsequently exhibited in Leeds and in London in 2012.
The triptych of performed photographs, each 5ft x 3ft, were created in August 2011. Wilsmore was interested in Latour's theory of object's as 'actors', and I wanted to discuss the nostalgia of objects and always had the Pitt Rivers museum in mind. I was interested in the visual incongruity of objects that, when displayed in the home, depict and construct a claim to personal authenticity and auto-biography. I wanted to explore the manner in which we collect objects as emblems of travel and events and I wished to place what I felt was a post-post-colonial collection in relative context with the style of illustration that I remember in the' Empire Book for Boys' genre from my childhood. Some pictures of Scott’s Antarctic expedition taken around 1911 by Herbert Ponting presented a centenary opportunity to look at documentation. September 2011 marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Aside of the numerical play on 1911 and 9/11 that resides in the title we sensed connections around exploration, driven intent (to the death for the men involved), territory, belief, stupidity. We wanted to look at objects and how they tied people together, we liked the pipes in the pictures, how they function, a social tie, a philosophical and artistic proposition – we also performed the idea of looking a bit rugged, traveled and playing out adventurer fantasies. We liked the shared connections that can be traced only amongst a few, not to be elitist but to confront a reality of local calibrations that hold no universals. I was also intrigued by the fact that I had discovered a ‘Piasecki Pass’ in Antarctica and in some respects the works produced imagine my occupation in that territory from my own artistic perspective.
We worked with Peter Morton as a photographer in the construction of a triptych formed of closely observed facsimiles of three of Pontin's original expedition shots. I then worked into each image to achieve the particular quality and palette for the work.
