Institution
Technological University Dublin (TUD)
Medium
Photography
Graduation Year
Class of 2024
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Emulsioned Botanics (fairy dust V1700Y) photographically explores three spaces, my bedroom, my back garden, and the Botanic Gardens. Taking photos of these three spaces using a variety of photographic methods, Polaroid, digital, analogue, and slides, I draw architectural plans from one photographed space, onto another. Reflecting on Dawn Ades's exploration of linear elements and structural patterns, the work is concerned with creating spatial articulation images of different resolutions and print qualities. I explore the embodied presence of concrete measurements being redescribed onto personal photographs creating intimate blueprints. Taking Polaroid photos from my bedroom and pasting them onto 35mm prints of my garden and the botanic gardens, I draw measurements upon them. The attention to accuracy in drawing over these photos, and the job of recalling of measurements, allows something unconscious, as if in a daydream, to leak through, and the photos exist as proof of this lived experience. The work involves non-conventional display mechanisms and arrangements. The polaroid is used in the display mechanism of the prints, being a spine within each constellation of images and using the measurement 1.6cm the (base of the polaroid) as a distance between them. Images are hung with one or two pieces of scrapbook tape, and painted masking tape, from 3cm to 20cm in length. Two A1 Inkjet print, taken from a miniature polaroid, with the architectural plans for the Fern house in the Botanical Garden drawn upon one, placed on the floor, next to an old bathroom tile with an artefact from my garden, as well as a polaroid from inside the fern house, and an older over exposed photo from my parents’ wedding. Through this collection of elements, I question what photographic prints of different values reveal to one another. The work incorporates a series of lumen prints entitled ‘This was made on my windowsill’ that capture lunar and solar movements throughout my bedroom, with dusty pinks and lavenders regressing next to yellow shapes. The lumen prints incorporate a list of pink colour names, such as ‘Angel Kiss’ to ‘Valentine’s Memories’, exposed onto them, creating a script or description of the pink colours used to draw measurements. The lumen prints are displayed a 2.3 m piece of MDF that runs perpendicular to the edge of the window within the space. The grid is also a persisting element in the individual artworks and the display mechanisms. The grid is a structure that can bridge the two realms of the unconscious and scientific. It is used in 35mm slide projections, where the slides and negatives changing at intervals of 30 seconds, are double-exposed images of my house and its surrounding exteriors. Emulsioned Botanics is a constellation of photographic qualities and domestic descriptions.
