For my Artist in Residence project, at the Dunedin School of Art, I investigated found abstraction in landscape in The Maniototo and Strath Taieri regions. The investigation led me to the Rock and Pillar Range where I was drawn to its straight sunlit snow line sitting on the range’s lumpy surface of hills, ridges and tracks. I photographed the range from Moonlight Road, Strath Taieri in June 2022.
The snow’s horizontal line bisected the landscape into snow/sky above and foothills/plains below splitting the landscape into contrasting light and dark sections. I captured this natural phenomenon from a frontal perspective in portrait format across the length of the range in quasi-cinematic multiple exposures.
In order to accentuate the graphic elements and scale of the mountain range, I have presented Snow Line as nineteen large black and white prints.
My investigation of found abstraction in landscape comes from my love of modernist abstract painting, in particular the works of Josef Albers and Barnett Newman. In my early black and white series Surfaces (1981) I explored abstraction by photographing textured stucco walls from a frontal perspective. I have recently taken this interest into a series of images of emptied cultural spaces.
The snow’s horizontal line bisected the landscape into snow/sky above and foothills/plains below splitting the landscape into contrasting light and dark sections. I captured this natural phenomenon from a frontal perspective in portrait format across the length of the range in quasi-cinematic multiple exposures.
In order to accentuate the graphic elements and scale of the mountain range, I have presented Snow Line as nineteen large black and white prints.
My investigation of found abstraction in landscape comes from my love of modernist abstract painting, in particular the works of Josef Albers and Barnett Newman. In my early black and white series Surfaces (1981) I explored abstraction by photographing textured stucco walls from a frontal perspective. I have recently taken this interest into a series of images of emptied cultural spaces.
Snow Line 2022. Scale 920 x 10450mm (19 mounted prints 825 x 550mm each) Dunedin School of Art Gallery, August 2022.
