REGRESSIVE WANDERING 2014-2015

The distracted self returns to roam around this cavernous labyrinth of interconnected rooms. Spaces momentarily come into view only to fade into darkness and obscurity. Progressive and regressive wandering, the Polaroid camera clicks, negatives drop image by image into the container of water, and black strings of emulsion drift away to reveal the dark, blurry, murky, homey, mouldering zone, that ‘architecture’ tries to repress.

In the darkroom, a re-articulation of this inhabited space. Deep cuts into the dense compost of fiber photographs, groundless depth, stratified space and time, now pliable. Folding, taping and gluing, I seek out traces of continuity between images.

Contingent bonds. Gleaming shards of white foam core intercalated. A peristaltic process, pearly, velvety, glossy images added and removed, the thick messy memory between intervals and disparities is affirmed and a sense of place emerges.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to work in a studio at Xchanges (an artist collective). The century old building had been a laundry, before that a bakery and now housed artist studios and a gallery space. One evening, at dusk with the building empty, I wandered from my own studio space throughout the many rooms and hallways of the building with my Polaroid camera taking pictures of the various spaces. Scanned, enlarged and printed, these photographs and my experience in this studio space that evening, became the basis for this series. Lynda Gammon