Denise Webber - Ultraviolet
Main Gallery, Lighthouse, Poole's Centre for the Arts 2018
Curator Stephen Wrentmore. Executive Curator Laura Mulhern.
The title pieces of this exhibition represent the merging of processes for Webber. The process of overdrawing the negative goes back to the roots of photography, from the first painted photographic plates to the collages of the Dadaists. The reworking of the image is also endemic throughout the history of photography, shorthanded to 'Photoshopped' after Adobe's image manipulation software. Webber's modification is exposed in drawn lines of alternative bodies, and ghosts of the body of before. In the images the body is both a canvas for nature, with images burnt by the sun onto the back, and a canvas of nature, as the flesh and its folds are revealed. This work can be seen as a reflection on aspects of exposure and the anxiety that our bodies can be ours and yet not ours at the same time. The artist grasps her own body as if to haul it into line or adjust its shape.
The work itself is made through several phases and references. The narrative of the work's creation connects to the narrative in us and what it reveals as we look. Anais Nin said, “We see with the ‘I’ of the eye” and so our own story, thoughts and way of seeing are revealed in our looking.
Stephen Wrentmore
Read catalogue text by Stephen Wrentmore here.
https://www.lighthousepoole.co.uk
Watch YouTube exhibition trailer here
Watch video interview with Denise Webber here
