Wk 20 // pre-seminar reflections, installation and artist statement

Orbital Resonance, Aggregate Peaks

2023

Photo-intaglio series

Oil-based etching ink on printmaking paper

Dimensions variable

This series is part of an ongoing body of work that investigates the volcanic geology of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. As a city built both on and from volcanoes, traces of their geology can be found throughout its fabric. Many areas of the city are characterised by the presence of volcanic peaks –as recognisable individuals or quarried sites where they once stood, and in aggregate-based urban structures built from their dispersed material. Along with the connections shared with the city’s inhabitants pre- and post- colonisation, these entities possess their own histories, interconnected materially through the expansive lava field beneath the city. Their existence spans a timeline beyond human scale and perception, and in one way or another, in entirety, absence or aggregate, the mountains are present.

Created through an amalgamation of analogue and digital processes, this series draws reference to the cameraless Antarctic imagery of artist Joyce Campbell, the writing of ecologist Geoff Park, and the black-and- white images of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from NASA’s Rosetta and Philae probes. Each print is based on a still from an associated video work created through the photogrammetric combination of geolocational data and digital imagery, derived from man-made geological structures across Tāmaki Makaurau. Printed using photopolymer etching plates - a medium that shares elements with camera sensor manufacturing and historic methods of map reproduction - the works explore the tangibility and individuality of the volcanic forms. Through this process, I aim to investigate their presence in the city’s spatiotemporal environment and to examine hierarchical ideologies that underly Western conceptualisation of landscape and its imagery.

In exploring the presence and material interconnection of these volcanoes in the context of contemporary imaging practices, I hope to reflect on their agency, and in turn on relationships to surrounding ecologies and material histories that we are a part of.

As an artist working in these spaces, I wish to acknowledge the tangata whenua of Tāmaki Makaurau and their custodianship of these tūpuna maunga.

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Since last seminar, how did my practice lead here?

This blog functions equally as a record of my MFA work and a thought diary around my practice. Since I tend to info-dump, I thought it might be helpful to have a more concise summary for things relating to Seminar :) I hope it is helpful.

As Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland is build on and of volcanoes, I am curious about the idea of them as inhabitants of the city, abiotic entities with their own thingness, agency, influence, histories, presence... While the mountains were used prior to colonisation in a variety of ways, either as sites themselves or in material form, quarrying that following the arrival of European settlers has lead to the modification of many - some being completely lost from the landscape. Still, they remain - individual rock parts of a mountainous whole, which in turn are individual parts of another, larger whole that is the volcanic field and activity that lies beneath the city. And in turn still then, that itself is a part of another whole - of yet emerged lava, and of the cyclic process of magma, aggregate, sand, and all other states of material being, in one way or another...

The photopolymer intaglio/etching series I am presenting is based on stills taken from the digital videos I've been making this year, which focus on the topography of Auckland's volcanic/geological material within man-made structures. Following on from my moving image point-cloud work, An entity for a while, earlier in the year, I wanted to continue exploring the idea of mountains as both individuals and part of an interconnected geological network of existence. One of the influences behind both these prints and my moving image works has been the images of asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies coming out of NASA's various programmes - both in the style they appear in, and in the act of looking via the lens at a geological/topographic subject. The materiality of celestial bodies imaged through probes, satellites and rovers coupled with the distant yet familiar forms within the void of space feels relevant to my current studio work - in theme, process/media and subject.

In another technological connection, I recently learned that developments in semiconductor sensors at NASA throughout the mid 20th century lead to the development of circuitry that became central to the development of digital cameras, camera phones, and other digital imaging methods. The process of creating these semiconductors (etching their surfaces to create conductive pathways) is also almost identical to the process of photo-intaglio print-making I've been working with.

Putting something in front of the camera, I think, has a tendency to create a potential hierarchy of observer to observed. In exploring this idea, I've been delving into the history of landscape imagery, both in general and in relation to Aotearoa following European settlement, and exploring how colonial ideologies towards the natural world have shaped how the world around us is experienced and viewed today - what of nature is put in front of the camera or imaged, what values are brought to that process. In the context of European art history and the concept of what a landscape is envisioned to be, this action often comes coded with ideology around human dominancy over the natural world. It is important to me to work in ways that allow the subjects I explore (the mountains, rocks, geological material) to exert some of their own agency in the images I create; I try not to think about how an image/subject should look, but try to capture it as it is, in a way that acknowledges and at times can challenge these traditions of landscape imaging. LiDAR, point clouds, geographical data and scientific methodologies have been useful in this process, as to me the images created through them feel both site specific (belonging to the particular place, subject, entity photographed) and individual, and importantly to me, capture some of the truths of them...

After working digitally for so much of the year, I wanted to see if I could tap into other forms of landscape imaging and break away from purely screen-based ways of working. This lead me to begin exploring the history of map-making and topography. In doing so and in researching the work of Joyce Campbell and ways of making non-photographic images, I learned of the longstanding connection between the field of photography and print-making (as documented through this blog). This inspired me to make this series of photopolymer prints (I would have loved to explore lithography, traditionally the medium favoured for mapmaking, but the stones are hard to find and I do not have access to one currently!). I also experimented a little with printing the stills as photographs, but I felt they became too sterile; printmaking with an etching press allowed me to retain a sense of materiality that was otherwise lost in digital photographic printing. I also appreciate the incidental marks that come from the printing process - while it is not always necessary to literally have my hand in the making of a work, I think of this as analogue 'static'. Sometimes if I over-wipe a plate (i.e. remove too much ink) before printing, the resulting image is indistinct and becomes lost in itself; but this to me reminds me of NASA's celestial images, the digital static and noise that comes with many media, and the inevitable limit point of knowing any one place or thing as individuals looking in or upon them from a distance, be it physical or ideological...

And that is what I've been up to! This isn't to take the place of a wall-text, but I hope it outlines how my brain has been working over the past few months :)