Multicomponent: Title: Wildflowers – Photo-constructed Exhibition
Multicomponent output with contextual information – Digital / visual media
- Submitting institution
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Edinburgh Napier University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 2658569
- Type
- Q - Digital or visual media
- Publisher
- -
- Month
- October
- Year
- 2014
- URL
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https://portfolios.napier.ac.uk/view/view.php?t=VUuJTAXfhEbzGK23LcwR
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Wild Flowers’ is a project that explores, analyses, and reconceptualises the trope(s) of flower imagery. It negotiates these forms of expression within the context of the western canon, notably in reference to Dutch flower painting from the Golden Age, and, in relation to the conventions of Japanese floral art. These customs are disrupted by overlaying the formal codes of floral representations with the transgressive ‘aesthetics’ of Art Povera. A further layer of dislocation is generated by the fact that these fine art models are presented as constructed photographic images, and displayed as banners.
My methodology has been meticulous and exacting: involving visual analysis, historical studies, and researches in geography and botany. These academic studies are combined with technical experiment. In essence, I have sought to extend the conventions of constructed photography by recognising the potential for a ‘delinquent’ representation of the most delicate subject matter. Consequently, the dialectic between the aesthetic and the commonplace is revealed. ‘Wild Flowers’, then, is unique within the standard models of flower photography; including contemporary practices.
The constructed photography style developed, in Scotland, circa 1986 with an exhibition of works by myself, and Calum Colvin, held at the Stills Gallery. Whereas Colvin has explored issues of identity and culture, my work has opened out a dialogue between fine art and the ordinary world. ‘Wild Flowers’ amplifies this concept. It realises this in a detailed practical creativity that engages processes of location and gathering; the selection of ‘found objects’; the manufacture and embellishment of presentation ‘vases’; the complicated photography of these constructed works; and, their printing as banner images. Hence, the imagery is not only original, but the methodology has no correlate within Scottish practice.
Evidence of these qualities is manifest in the national and international impact of the project; as detailed in the accompanying literature.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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