Ashleigh Garwood—What Next
Why pay attention?
Sydney based artist and photographer Ashleigh Garwood began 2017 with a residency at the University of Idaho in the Astrophysics Department, deciphering astrophotography, and the myriad scientific lenses used to determine the colour and composition of the universe beyond our sight—radio and gravitational waves, weather patterns, and mapping interferences, for example.
These composite dimensions and systems of information beyond regular vision are what interests Garwood, who is also currently completing an honours year in photography at the University of Technology, Sydney.
What do they do?
To construct her images, Garwood blends a great variety of processes—engaging in a number of dark room and digital techniques to produce densely layered, otherworldly shots. What continues to spur her interest in photography is the ability to experiment with the expectations and control the conventions of the medium.
What’s it about?
Garwood’s practice bends the structure and widens scope of the visual world. Layers of information are added, stripped away, and re added. And what’s revealed is the potent power of photography to create and manipulate our own perception. The title of her upcoming show MASSING, borrows from architectural vernacular—a way in which to describe how a building’s form, shape, and size may be perceived. Here, Garwood’s alien landscapes reference the accumulation and erosion of time and meaning within each image.
The artist says…
“Photography has such a significant connection to a truth-claim, but at the same time images are so fragmented and manipulated. That is the space of photography that I find really interesting; that you can objectively know a photographic work isn’t a depiction of a reality, but at the same time it provides a space for reflecting on that.”
You can see it at…
Garwood’s next show, MASSING will be showing at May Space in Sydney from 10 October to 4 November 2017.
This piece first appeared in Art Collector magazine, issue 82, October—December 2017.