statement

My most recent body of works have set about to question experiential representations of truth.  Both within my still life (Nature Morte) and war scene pieces (Dulce et Decorum est), I have begun to think about artistic intervention and fictional representation within Art.  I explore and deliver these concepts by utilising new media techniques such as digital photography, projection as performance, photography and film.

My working practice is an investigation into drawing and mark-making with light.  I use artificial lighting, such as pyrotechnic fuse-wire, as a way of depicting light and shade within my compositions, strengthening the illusion of depth within a two-dimensional image.  This ephemeral process is captured by film - allowing space and objects to become visible for a limited time; however, with the constant flow of the fuse-wire, the image remains constant in the viewers’ unconscious memory, allowing objects to appear, re-appear and disappear.  Through the use of revelation and concealment within a composition, an element of chaos is re-introduced into works which are formally orchestrated and controlled. 

Within my works, I try to revise and rethink "traditional" approaches to mark-making generally associated with the methods found within painting and sculpture, and apply these within my photographic and filmic process.  I seek to question the boundaries of the (un)conscious and memory and the way in which we interpret what we see - What does one really see? What can one really see? How long is that vision "alive"?  Through these processes, a paradoxical situation emerges whereby control over the image is both enabled by my own agency in the arrangement of the lighting, yet I am forced to relinquish that control once the fuse-wire has been lit and a space opens up between the object and lens. 

dave farnham 2007