Hi everyone!

As part of my photography course, I have to track my development on a blog. The posts from September 2011 until January 2012 are part of a module called Project Management, for which I was required to work in a group of eight students to create an exhibition. The blog followed every step we took in order to create a successful gallery. The blog posts starting from September 2012 follow my final year on the course. I'll be documenting my research and analysis of my final year projects, as well as include notes of my Professional Practice unit - which prepares us for a range of post graduate options. Finally it also looks at a project called New Creatives, where I'll be working alongside an artists to help college students get more involved with art.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Doug Aitken


American artist Aitken is probably best known for his work with video, and the characteristics that define that medium are apparent within New Opposition. The photographs do not work as self-sufficient one-off frames but rely on each other for meaning. The optical tricks that the landscapes form when placed together give the impression to the viewer that they are either falling into the centre of the earth of are on top of it looking down as if from the apex of a pyramid. This active involvement by the viewer and the three-dimensional sculptural sensations of the photographs can also be seen in the elaborate installations that often accompany his videos. – Text and images from Susan Bright Art Photography Now

‘The series New Opposition consists of three pieces and was started in 2001. I was interested in the fragmentation of the image. I wanted to formulate an image that was whole but also broken apart. So these are multiple images working as one. I wanted to find a way to blend together different moments in time, different spaces and different locations. I wanted to bring them together in a central unifying image. They are not portraits or cityscapes but more an entropic progression. As the series progresses it becomes increasingly abstracted and denser and you get a sense of motion. The elements in the last image are ones you might just walk past in daily life – there is nothing special about the land. You can imagine someone who is surveying the land taking them. I really like the idea of banality and repetition being used to generate images, which are simple and unobstructed and not captivated by composition.
 The images create a cycle of different places, but they can all be tied together though the central unifying theme of the horizon, which cuts, perpendicular, through them. I was after a three-dimensional quality. Working as well as the ideas of montage and editing, basically filmic concepts, as in repetition. I wanted the eyes to constantly search for the horizon. When the images are brought together they collapse and create a feeling of retreating or expanding.’ – Doug Aitken

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