Tim Ridley, a recent graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design, uses photography as a springboard in to new work. Exploring the realm of difference and the carnivalesque Ridley applies the photographic medium to tactically extract ways of approaching and documenting his working process.
“In contemporary society we encounter difference on a daily basis. Some of these differences are real and some are constructed. They affect a large part of our lives, the decisions we make and the way we live. My practice examines the energy that these differences produce, experimenting with the electricity that their potential difference supplies. I use performance, photography, collage and assemblage to create a dialogue between differences, both found and imagined. I try to include myself in the piece and place my practice in the public domain via the Internet or through performing in public spaces. Seepage of contemporary art into the ‘real’ world is part of the crossing of boundaries that difference produces. Comedians have long since discovered the power of difference and humour is a powerful trope for me. Bakhtin’s analysis of carnivalesque laughter is of interest, the way laughter has been reduced from abundance to a narrow ironic or sarcastic status. Using metaphor I aim to explore difference in a positive, non-didactic way diversifying into different mediums, crossing the boundaries between theatre and art, public space and gallery spaces.
‘Carnival logic (the logic of ambivalence) is not restricted to the limitation of binary oppositions which set limits, but is equivalent of the power of continuum (positive and negative)’
John Lechte on Bakhtin, 50 contemporary thinkers.
I often use photography as a springboard for new work; an index of a found situation (see ʻdead foxʼ and ʻplums and palletʼ) or it can be simply, along with a video, a record of a performance as in the case of Derrida v Jordan and Cartrouble. The former can be a complex encounter with a visually challenging situation, a conjoining of the natural and the artificial, the new and the old, alive and dead. Often there is no way to adequately describe the relationship that exists between the two elements encountered at the same time in the same place. In this case the image is the end product and becomes what perhaps could be called the finished piece, but I struggle to feel that anything is ever finished, more likely it is a mode within a larger investigation. The complex worlds depicted in the photography of Lee Freidlander have had an influence on my work, all found situations cropped by his 35mm frame and rendered in black and white.
