By ROBIN WALLACE-CRABBE
A photograph is the visual record of an instant in time – let’s average it out at a 60th of a second. That moment is too brief for the human mind-eye setup to capture and examine. While the eye is a perpetual camera, scanning our world, we are unable to relate to its visual grabs the way we can a photograph, discovering some detail way off centre and in the distance. Photo images in a digital format are the result of the same brief exposure but, via Photoshop very easy to manipulate.
Still, way back in the middle of the 19th century the photo-freak author of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll was producing double exposure prints. However, at STUR GALLERY there are double exposures that lead us into fresh territory. Here film stock has been fed into a 35mm camera, shot, rewound, shot again and sometimes even put through a third time. Doing this mixes images of Australia and Bulgaria, the birth places of artists, Ned Bott and Joteva.
These are big colour prints. Look at them and you discover things that were not intended by the artists. Just as Jackson Pollock let splashed paint reveal stuff to him these two are permitting what the camera found to be accidentally blended – kind of dual-autobiographical.
They, the artists, discovered so much by letting this happen while connecting their very different backgrounds. As well there are three kind-of-wild sculptures assembled from found objects, each relating to the journey undertaken to grab these images. A lovely exhibition leading the viewer to fresh experiences along art’s winding and dusty road.
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