Artist Statement
<In process. Friday, 6th November 2009>
My most recent project has been exploring the idea of structure;
specifically the personal structure, and howw this is made up. I am
exploring this subject through text, illustrated image, and photography.
<pre 2008>
Currently,
in my art practice my main focus is on large scale, mural photography
and installation work. I found the studio photographic process a good
place to start to explore performance, where one performs the part of
the photographer and of the subject, and with the end product an
installation, the conflation of the real and the imaginary, where the
viewer is brought into the projected mind space of the installation,
and can therefore act the part of the audience.
I have been exploring how the performative elements of the subject
effect the photographic process, and their correlation to reality. I am
particularly interested in the reality effect created by a photograph,
and how I, the artist can manipulate these boundaries to my advantage.
Using the life sized photographs placed next to the stage, or studio
set up, in which the photographer and the subject perform the
photographing process, I try to get as close to real colour, and
preportions, in order to simulate the “real” space of the
photographic studio for the end product, therefore posing questions as
to where the boundaries lie in this pre-conceived notion of real space,
and photographic space.
To constitute these questions, I place the same signifiers within the
photographs, as within the set-up of the installation, trying to
stimulate a sense of similarity between reality and photo-reality.
I have been influenced by artists; Erwin Wurm, and his fluxist
performance style photographs, Jeff wall's imitation and appropriation
photography and Japanese wood block prints, such as those in Ukiyo-e
(Pictures of the Floating World) at NGV, particularly
Hokusai
and
Hiroshige, and their use of signifiers telling the story.When
taking photographs, I
feel that they are biased, producing a
“flat” image, and they only show one persons perspective,
usually the photographer. To further my study I would like to
manipulate this situation and explore the flatness or the two
dimensional representation that photographs are, and introduce elements
that bring an object outside, into the two dimensional space set up by
the photograph. Manipulating the way a photograph can cause the
ganzfeld effect, where we look through the image/photograph to what is
contained in it, as if it were more then representation; as if it were
real space. The co-existence of reality and fiction in/along the same
plain.
This next year for
me will be integral building blocks in furthering my
career as an artist. I will be able to explore in greater detail
aspects of my practice which I haven't had the opportunity to do as of
yet for example video and further interactive installation.
Samuel Overington
