The exhibition is ready to go. Launch is on Thursday evening 9th March.
Here is my statement from the catalogue.
A few words from the artist.
The simulacrum project starts from the premise that a copy might be an imitation or substitute, as its definition suggests. The idea originates from two sources, one a real experience and the other theoretical. In my own experience as time has progressed so has technology, and with it changes to how we encounter images. The ideas for this project were defined through research during studies for my masters degree, where a particular phrase, captured my imagination.
‘a representation without a ‘guaranteed’ referent in the world’ (Foster, 2005)
This phrase relates to the writings of Roland Barthes, where the simulacrum is defined as a copy without an original. It was this question about reading images and how we relate to them, that changed the way that I thought about my work. While the work does not seek to illustrate the theory, it has provided a catalyst for developing the ideas and rethinking representation.
My practice for many years has centred on collage methods, along with painting and printmaking. But it was not until this point that they started to overlap.Collage is usually defined as found images reused to make another picture. As a process it is about recombining, and as a material it is similar to words in language, which pre-exist the expression before being combined. In this project both aspects are at play, as the original becomes a printed copy, while the found image clings on to the real world, and then they both float interchangeably.
As we head towards what might potentially become a ‘post-production era’ where images are all virtual, I am interested in that new relationship we have to images. Not as a rejection of this possible future, but more as a bridge, where the original and the copy, whether anchored in the real world or not, coexist creating a certain curiosity, and where the machine and the hand are both valid. Most of the work for the project has a secure grounding in the everyday world, be it a collage fragment or the use of paper stencils which have inevitable printing distortions, but none of the images securely fix their references, allowing a role for the viewer in finding their own association
