Some text I have written to accompany my contribution to our open studios exhibition 'Around Photography' 25 and 26 October and 1 and 2 November 12 – 6pm:
Thinking Still
Photography is to my practice what something is to something else, but I don’t know what those things are.
I don’t know what the relationship is or the things that it connects. I don’t know that I need to articulate this any more clearly to myself at the moment.
I use photography just as most artists do. I use it for the following:
• To document work I have made and exhibitions I am in.
• To record visual ideas I think of so that I don’t forget them.
• To record an arrangement of objects in my studio before I move it around or put it away, so that the connections may be recalled at a later date.
But mostly I don’t go back to look at these saved images.
I can’t get round the power involved in photography. Behind the lens I am a god creating worlds. In front of the camera I am always a victim. Maybe because I am female and I can’t get through, round, over or past porn.
My first camera was a really old paper concertina job that my Dad gave me. I took it to London on a school trip and took a picture of Tower Bridge. It was magic.
During the Brighton Photobiennial 2008 I am artist in residence at Fabrica, engaging with and thinking (a lot) about the work of Thomas Hirschhorn, specifically his use of appropriated images in his Incommensurable Banner. The images are graphic depictions of bodies damaged and destroyed by munitions. People so far are displaying a range of reactions to this work. I am a lightning conductor for them.
I am thinking still.
