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interplanetary
“
After all, if everything is a record of itself, then what is the
difference between the physical thing and a perfectly accurate simulation
of it?”
ROBERT WRIGHT, THREE SCIENTISTS AND THEIR GODS
- LOOKING FOR MEANING IN AN AGE OF INFORMATION ,Times Books,
London, 1988, p51.
In
my most recent work I have been investigating the intersection of
realities. Now, in following this project I will further interrogate the
relationships between virtual reality/reality, and what makes compelling
viewing to contemporary audiences.
More
specifically this project will pursue previous photographic process as
exemplified in, The Re-Photographic Survey, by Mark Klett &
Associates in the mid seventies. In that work Klett & his fellow
photographers conducted a survey by retracing the steps of 19th Century
photographers in America’s west and re-photographing sites, thereby
giving a new vision of past, present & the intersections that became
apparent through time.
In
my project I aim to conjoin known “real” landscapes with an archive of
known “real” landscapes.
This,
in line with the thinking of scientist Ed Fredkin, & theorist Mark C
Taylor, who postulate that,
“ To think virtuality is to think reality differently.”
MARK C TAYLOR, ‘Interfacing’, HIDING , University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1997, p267.
will lead me to provide an accurate simulation of known “reality” with the “reality” of the source images. Thereby, I will open the door to the viewers’ understanding of the images that I will construct.
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ned kelly dreaming
It is with the gaze from Ned
Kelly’s helmet that I began to look at his landscape. A narrow slit —
his self imposed panavision.
This vision is then immersed
& melded with the perspective of an aboriginal dreamscape — most
specifically from the Yarralin Tribe —
from far north -western
Australia.
It is the duality of
Australian myth & the Yarralin Aborigines, the
inclusion of the figure of Ned Kelly within
both cultures which has resulted in the exhibition I propose.
Ned
Kelly represents one of the few inclusive links of white Australia to
Aboriginal dreaming, the results of this investigation has inspired of
these images.
“In the farthest
corner of the continent from Kelly country the Yarralin people of
north-western Australia have taken Ned Kelly into their dreaming. They
tell how when salt water covered the land Ned Kelly and his angel friends
came in a boat, made a river and caused the salt water to retreat.
Another story relates
that he came to Wave River Station and taught the Aborigines there how to
make tea and damper, that ‘although there was only one billy of tea and
one little damper, everybody was fed.’ This Dreamtime figure who evokes
Jesus, Noah and Moses is also present in the age of European settlement.
According to another
Yarralin story, he kills four policemen at Wyndham and Captain Cook takes
him back to England. There Ned’s throat is cut and he is buried. The Sky
darkens, there is a sound like thunder and Ned Kelly rises up into the
sky. White men are rigid with fear and distant Darwin buildings
tremble.”I
Jones, Ned Kelly—A Short Life , p339. (Based on the study of
Deborah Bird Rose, ‘Ned Lives’, Austarlian
Aboriginal Studies , 1989. Volume 2.
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much much more
A small sample of my history. In reality i could fill hundreds of pages with black & white and colour work ranging from the mid seventies to current practice.
It is a collection i love dearly and i am constantly referring to this enormous archive.
My goal with this section is to expand it greatly to give the viewer an understanding of the depth of my image making practice.