Multiple image works

The works in this group look at the ideas of continuity and discontinuity specifically in light of a disrupted linearity. Texts became important as structures that have direction but that also contain internal relationships that could alter or subvert that direction. (This interest led to the text tables used in the Red Earth Series.)

The focus on the 'direction' of an image had a strong effect on the shape of it. These pieces set out to find a form where a static image could expand and redefine linearity.

For Andrea (1998-9) was the first in an ongoing series of large-scale digital triptych prints and set the form for those that followed. The piece is based on images and texts from Andrea Fisher's Let us now praise famous women and was created as a tribute to the author after her death.

The idea in this piece was to look at looking. The computer's organisational role has enabled various ways of looking and it's collection and use of data has expanded over the years.

The scanner as input device has extended our vision; the view of the image as well as the image viewed. It's like a telescope or microscope in that it can illuminate whole new landscapes or micro-landscapes. The images looked at become even more complex objects - they exist on many levels and each levels meanings migrate and refer to (or contextualise) each other. The image/idea of the 'vehicle' in Sleeping in a Car on a Sunday in Rock Creek Park, Washington DC (1942) by Marjorie Collins became a multifaceted metaphor for this piece. Words, images and objects depicted become vehicles...An illusion of movement is present in the form that the words take (and are read) - they become small vehicles moving on a transparent highway through the image(s).

In Translation (2000) is based on a Russian poem by the Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam. The poem speaks of the duality of language as well as the dual nature of human lives and actions (especially political - it was written during the Stalinist regime). The poem is called The Slate Ode or The Slate Pencil Ode depending on which translation you read and appears in the print twice in two different translations - it is an attempt to look at something which is both 'the same' and also very 'different.'

In the case of this print I became involved in looking at the idea of translation, that is how we all understand the world - through translation. If we think that our senses translate reality for us to comprehend, our language also translates our translation. Therefore my reading and understanding a Russian text has multiple layers of translation, all of which are the culture in which we live and make art (language). This distancing from what we might call the 'real' world sets us adrift.

Many of the images used in In Translation come from other art sources - the sailing boats come from a 'film' by Marcel Broadthers (A Voyage on the North Sea) which is a film of still images. The rather haphazard sinuous lines across the centre panel come from a drawing by Brice Marden. Other images are culled from random tv programmes. The crack that runs the length of each panel is a scan of the poem's book cover spine - the ink on the paper has cracked and this produced the main metaphorical image of the piece. [An image of the poet's head can be seen in the whole piece - his face is looking towards the ceiling in the top panel and his ear is the central image of the bottom panel.]

The discontinuity of the piece is primarily a musical influence which is discussed briefly in the notes on Red Earth (for Primo Levi).

Bloom (1998) was a precursor to the shaped prints that followed. The two panels are exhibited back to back.

Copyright information

This is an archive of the Digital Art Museum for historical reference.
See dam.org for the current site.