Output details

Aporia

Aporia was a solo exhibition, located in a temporary space between two artist-run galleries, Market and The Duchy on Glasgow’s Duke Street, which formed part of GI: Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2010). It comprises 12 photographic works of landscape made whilst travelling through Mexico, Japan and Australia (2009-2010). The central concern for this body of work is based around the concept of Aporia. Originating in the Greek, Aporia can mean a number of different things, which includes a philosophical puzzle, a state of perplexity and doubt or a situation where contradictory positions are presented simultaneously but are equally plausible. This concept has been explored by a number of writers, most famously by Kafka and Beckett and by musicians, such as the American composer Charles Ives, in his work Unanswered Question (1935) and I wanted to test the potential of the photographic image to interrogate and articulate similar concerns. Travelling, for me, represents a search for something that cannot readily be seen or experienced but which is formed through photographic encounters. My photographs reference places through images of land, seas and skies with a particular interest in trees, and use the vocabulary of the medium to build narratives between various places. For this body of work, my research inquiry asks: What relationships can be built between unconnected places, momentary events and different experiences of time and light to articulate Aporia? Work from this show was also exhibited as part of a residency and exhibition entitled Non Fiction (2010) at the Banff Centre of Arts, Canada, and Studio 58: Women Artists in Glasgow since World War 2 (2012), Glasgow School of Art. The exhibition was supported by a research trip to Japan (2009), and a public presentation about the work at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana Xochimilco, Mexico City 2013.