The work is an investigation of the relationship between the illusionary and material aspects of a photograph, that is, the image and paper.

The relationship between the image of a photograph and the surface it is printed on is paradoxical and problematic. Undoubtedly for most of photography’s history the image and the substrata have been inextricably linked. What is the nature of this relationship? There is a thin layer of emulsion that clings to a support, without which a photograph would be a wispy tissue. It is within these microns of matter that the power of the photograph is situated.

The most important thing about a photograph is the image. The primary reason a photograph is made is to exchange the information contained in it, to show others or one’s self a picture of something. However, what role has the support material in this exchange? All photo images need a support or they collapse (even projections need a wall and digital files need a screen), but is the relationship just about holding up the emulsion or is there a more meaningful association?

My work explores this terrain by creating pieces where the images are self-referencing and where the image is often confused with the material.

Strategies include photographing photographs to highlight their materiality and using images of ripped photographic paper, which are then ripped and rejoined to create a collage of real and fake rips

The reality of the ripped surfaces are not evident until closely scrutinised. They displace the viewer from their privileged perspective-enforced viewing position requiring them to investigate (usually touch) the surfaces to find out what is going on.

There is an enmeshment of the actual and the illusion that causes any photographic reproduction of the work to collapse back into the power of the illusion, problematic for disseminating images of my work, but significant conceptually as it needs to be experienced as an object (the paper in the space with us) and not as a symbol (the space depicted in the image).

The work displayed here, MULTIPLE SAME RIPS comprises forty 8x10 inch images connected by the use of a rip that appears uniform throughout all the variations of the pieces. A template was used to create the rips, and when seen in this quantity, the rip loses its transgressive nature. It reads more like a repetitive motif — part of the design, but still obviously the material at-large. There are also different paper types used here: gloss and lustre create an inconsistency in reflection, but also a subtlety that, once the rips have been noted, continues to impart the object’s materiality into the finer stages of visual scrutiny.