Earth is an adaptation of the The Blue Marble photograph, originally taken in 1972 by Harrison Schmitt and Ron Evans on the Apollo 11 voyage. The original photograph was edited so that the Earth appears pixelated. From a distance, the blue and white sphere appears as a familiar image of the Earth. However, as we move closer to the image it becomes more abstract, as it dissolves into a more obvious depiction of dots. The closer we get, the larger the darkness around the dots becomes, highlighting how much of the earth in the image is not actually present.
This illusion of wholeness highlights the idea that most of us have never actually seen the earth from this perspective, in outer space. The familiarity of our earth seen from outer space is, in this sense, an illusion. More broadly, Earth highlights the visual deception of wholeness that often defines how we experience the world.
Sun was originally sourced from NASA’s image library. The original photograph was printed on a glossy paper, unable to absorb the ink of the photo-printer. The ink rather sat on the paper’s surface where it remained wet and malleable for at least twenty minutes. This allowed the image to be manipulated and distorted in ways that diverge from more traditional forms of photographic representation. For example, the wet ink in Sun was intentionally manipulated with a paintbrush to create a contrived flame-like pattern. Flames were added where they didn’t exist in the original photograph. Sun, in this sense, becomes an unusual mix of photographic likeness and painterly absurdism.
Moon uses a similar technique to Sun but rather than the wet inks being painted, the glossy paper supporting the ink was tipped to a slight angle, so the ink dripped slightly across the paper’s surface. The ink also reacted, in its own way, to the glossy paper—in some cases interacting with dust—creating a diffuse flow-like pattern reminiscent of small bits of metal attached to a magnet. The glossy paper was then placed on a lightbox and rephotographed, giving the final image a luminous appearance to mimic the actual moon in our night sky.
Atom is an adaptation of a photograph captured in 2017 by David Nadlinger—at the time a physics PhD candidate at Oxford University. Nadlinger was able to capture, for the first time, a single atom using an ordinary, non-scientific camera. The final image depicts a small spec (the atom) between two metal electrodes placed 2mm apart. A version of this image was sourced from the internet and then printed. The printed version was then rephotographed with a powerful macro lens, in an absurd attempt to get closer to the tiny atom.
The resulting photograph not only enlarged the atom but also magnified the pixels of the original file and the ink droplets from the printer—bringing us closer to the material presence of the photograph. This process, within the execution of Atom, attempts to ask: What is revealed to us if we look deeply into the world of matter? Does seeing into things bring us closer to their reality or does it lead us further and further into an absurd, never-ending path of non-meaning?
Eddington’s Eclipse is an interpretation of a 1919 eclipse sourced from the internet and originally captured by Arthur Eddington’s team, which helped prove Einstein’s general theory of relatively. The moon’s silhouette was cut in Photoshop and slightly shifted to the right of the frame, leaving behind it the Photoshop matrix that signifies empty space. This image was then re-photographed from the computer screen using a 4x5 camera. The negative from the 4x5 camera was then splatted with black paint, which once printed in a darkroom became white in appearance.
The final image is a mixture of scientific evidence with absurd fiction: marks made to measure stars combined with marks from paint to mimic the fake presence of stars. Behind an actual moon silhouette is a digital matrix, highlighting the digital reality behind most images we behold today. Eddington’s Eclipse blurs the line between old and new, past and present, and between the dichotomies of digital/analogue and fact/fiction.
Star Clusters is a triptych series that began as images captured by NASA’s Hubble telescope. The sourced images of star clusters were laser cut into black photographic paper, and then mounted onto gold mirrors. As a result, the stars not only became physically absent in the photographic print, but were also replaced by a reflection of the surrounding environment and the viewer’s presence. In this sense, these works point to how star clusters are sometimes used as a canvas for projecting ideas, myths and fantasies. These works attempt to highlight the viewer's active role in projecting meaning onto images of our cosmos.
Messier 9 is an adaptation of a photograph taken by NASA’s Hubble telescope of the Messier 9 globular cluster in the constellation of Ophiuchus (M9). This work was created by laser cutting NASA’s original image into black cardboard. The black cardboard was then rephotographed in a studio. The star-shaped cut-outs were illuminated by shining a torch behind them.
As you get closer to Messier 9 it becomes more obvious that the white specs aren’t stars but lined cut-outs mimicking stars. Yet, this illusion isn’t a full illusion, for the position of each star shape correlates, point-by-point, to the actual position of the stars in the Messier 9 cluster, as captured in the original NASA image. It is in this sense that Messier 9 blurs the boundary between truth and fiction.
Untitled Facades explores how something as elusive as colour can be utilised by companies to help create a sense of familiarity with their brand — a brand that exists more as a pervasive idea than a specific entity.
This puddle reflected the colour of the 7–Eleven building behind it. There was something violent about the scene: with the cracks and the yellow-coloured spillage, as though a puncture or wound occurred in the concrete road. But also, the yellow hole felt like a portal — perhaps to a garish hell beneath the earth.
