Studies of negative space
Snow meadow, scanned 35mm film, developed in mint tea, 2024
When I was in Finland, I enjoyed a little love affair with this stretch of landscape. A 20 minute walk away, just past the beehives. I visited almost everyday. Open land dropped to some trees that lined a frozen bullrushy lake and the forest expanded beyond. The sloped area in the foreground was drawn with black spikes and blobs amongst thick pillowy snow. The remnants of a summer meadow.
Heavy hats of snow caused it’s sunflowers to hang their heads. There is something sad about their posture. Heads cast to the ground. Spent. Their abstract print across an otherwise blank background was what appealed to me. Its simplicity reminded me a little of my installations.
Over the last 10 years negative space has been a delicious muse of mine, both visually and conceptually. The space surrounding a thing, is what enables the thing to be seen and heard. There is power in it. Our future relies on it’s protection on a micro-to-macro level, in my opinion.
Yesterday I scanned some negatives and saw these photographs for the first time since being home from Arteles Creative Centre On one of the last nights of the residency, all of the artists gathered to drank mint tea in the kitchen. I shared the remnants with this reel of 35mm film and with Pauline’s clock watching, Thandiwe’s shake-and-dance agitation and Lie’s spare leftover Fix, we collectively developed the film. Through process, chemistry and memory my now dispersed worldwide friends became entangled with the materiality of its photographs. Absent but present.
I love the fragility of plant developed photographs. They feel organic and atmospheric, and the photographs I took in Finland especially, feel like the landscape that they depict.
Today it struck me that those dead broken necked sunflower stalks are offering their seed to the ground. They are actively participating in life’s cycle. As the Celsius climbs, the land thaws and colour returns, the seeds will drop and draw down into the earth. Some already had. My love-affair-landscape was the negative space between two growing seasons. Dormant. As was I. As was this roll of film. With relief, spring is emerging and the cycle begins again.
The space surrounding a thing, is what enables the thing to be seen and heard. My current preoccupation…
Snow meadow, January 2024 - Haukijärvi, Finland