Andrew Gorman-Murray Photographer / Photomedia Artist: June 2014

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

My photography and art practice is influenced strongly by my professional training in cultural geography. My artwork is conceptually-driven, and simultaneously personal and political. In my visual arts practice, I am drawn to understanding diverse relationships between identity, place and environment. On the one hand, my work explores the intersections of cultural and natural systems, including human-animal relations, conservation, urban nature, streetscapes, architecture, capital exchange and natural elements. On the other hand, I also delve into political and psychological work that captures shifting moments of selfhood, identification and belonging.

For information on my academic work, see: https://uws.academia.edu/AndrewGormanMurray

Contact me via email: andrewgm3 [at] gmail.com

Spectres

Conflict, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

Earth Spirit, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 42cm.

Question, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

Confrontation, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

Fire Spirit, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 42cm.

Despair, 2014.

Inkjet Print on Platine Fibre Rag, 29.7cm x 21cm.

Spectres is a self-portraiture series that is deeply personal, yet simultaneously speaks to the ghosts within us all. The images elicit the unstable senses of self that I – we – grapple with daily. Using spirit photographs of my doppelgängers, Spectres explores inner turmoil, conflict, mediation and despair. Pared back to the metaphysics of first principles, this psychologically-driven work questions the coherence of identity.

The exploration is underpinned by a range of concepts and practices from philosophy and photography. The fundamental concept is Derrida’s notion of hauntology, which uses the figure of the ghost to contest the stability of ontology, the metaphysical understanding of being, existence and reality. In French, hauntologie and ontologie are homophones, and Derrida thus uses the uncertainty of speech and language – the media for telling stories about ourselves – to unsettle our certainty of selfhood and our sense of being-in-the-world.

Ontology – our being, selfhood and identity – is not fixed but volatile. Our sense of self is haunted, evinced by the figure of the ghost. The ghost deconstructs presence/absence, past/future and here/there. Instead of a stable sense of self, we are haunted by past selves, which are also future visions of ourselves. Past and future selves collide in the present. When the absent erupts within the present, selfhood is fractured, identity deferred, and uncertainty begets turmoil and despair.

In Spectres, this metaphysics is examined through concepts and practices used in past and contemporary photography. The series combines spirit and doppelgänger photography to explore the inner conflicts of multiple selves. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spirit photographers attempted to capture the spectral world, though their ghost-images were fraudulent. This does not mean our own ghosts are false, and I use spirit photography to convey the experience of fractured selves. Practitioners such as William Mumler (US, 1832-1884) and William Hope (UK, 1863-1933) used multiple exposures to render ghosts. Spectres uses double-exposure to expose my own ghosts.

In doing so, the series also draws on doppelgänger photography to enliven the interactions between my fractured selves. The doppelgänger is a ‘double walker’, the ghostly double of a living person, often seen as a harbinger of bad luck and an omen of death. Cornelia Hediger’s (US, b. Switzerland 1967) self-portraiture series, Doppelgänger and Doppelgänger II, explore her doppelgänger’s affects on self. Through meticulous self-choreography, she builds ensembles of doppelgängers to examine alter egos and split personalities. Which figure is the doppelgänger? They are all Hediger: she is her ghostly double.

Spectres joins Hediger’s careful composition with double-exposure. Some images convey my doppelgängers as translucent, ghostly figures melting into the landscape; others render them opaque, tangible and capable of physical contact. The ‘black-curtained’ portraits are internally-focused and self-probing; the landscape images suggest openness and possibility. The aim is to speculate on my changing perceptions of my own fractured selves. If I accept that selfhood is fractured and deferred, then my selves’ perceptions of each other also move in and out of focus. Spectres explores the shifting conflicts, conciliations and despondency within me – and within you.

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Selected Bibliography

Cannilla, Giuseppe, Paolo Musu and Stella Sanctacaterina (1989) Ghost Photography: Illusion of the Visible (Mystfest, Milano).

Dawson, Alec (2014) http://www.alecdawson.net/ (accessed 20 May 2014).

Derrida, Jacques (1994) Spectres of Marx (Routledge, New York).

Hediger, Cornelia (2012) http://corneliahediger.com/index.html (accessed 15 April 2014).

Levy, Adam Harrison (2010) The puzzle of the self: Cornelia Hediger’s doppelgängers, Photo Technique, March/April, 23-28.

Wojcik, Daniel (2009) Spirits, apparitions, and traditions of supernatural photography, Visual Resources: An International Journal of Documentation 25 (1-2): 109-136.

Installation photograph, COFA, D Block, 16 June 2014.

Spectral Self-Portrait, Thanks to Derrida

Spectral Self-Portrait, Thanks to Derrida, 2014.

Inkjet print on gallery gloss, 42cm x 59.4cm.

Who am I? How do I understand my fractured and shifting sense of selfhood? Spectral Self-Portrait takes up Jacque Derrida's notion of hauntology, which uses the figure of the spectre, or the ghost, to deconstruct the surety of ontology, the metaphysics of being, existence and reality. The ghost is an uncertain and ethereal figure that contests binaries of being/becoming, presence/absence and past/future. A hauntological approach to identity and selfhood reveals that how I understand myself in the present is always informed by past memories of personal experience, which are at the same time future visions of my-self. On the one hand, my sense of self is stretched across time and space, a changing and evolving dialogue of being and becoming and becoming-undone. On the other hand, past and future selves collapse in the present, deferring a sense of a fixed and unified identity, and unsettling selfhood.

To convey this sense visually, I draw on the techniques of fin de siecle spirit photography, which used multiple exposure to capture apparitions, ghosts and the spectral world. While spirit photographers falsely represented the ghosts of others, I use the technique of multiple exposure to depict my own ghosts, my own self deferred from and to the past and future. The setting is also liminal space, referencing how hauntology affects the surety of history and landscape as well. This stairwell used to be the grand staircase of a nineteenth century department store located in Newtown, Sydney. It is now a fire escape, the last vestige of a grand building converted to twenty-first century uses. Once peopled by shoppers and their social interactions, this is now a 'haunted' space of human absence. Spectral self and haunted space are co-constituted in this image.

The Ibis and Us: Ecologies of Belonging

The Ibis and Us: Ecologies of Belonging #1, 2014.

Inkjet print on rice paper, 38cm x 57cm.

The Ibis and Us: Ecologies of Belonging #2, 2014.

Inkjet print on rice paper, 38cm x 57cm.

The Ibis and Us: Ecologies of Belonging #3, 2014.
Inkjet print on rice paper, 38cm x 57cm.

The Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca) is a native waterbird, which has colonised Sydney over the last thirty years due to persistent drought in their traditional inland wetland habitats. My artwork responds to this geographical and ecological change, starting with the question: Can Sydneysiders live together with the Australian White Ibis? The artwork is a photomontage series that contemplates interspecies relations between humans and ibises. The composite images combine portraits of ibises from the Cook’s River with photographs of ‘home wanted’ flyers that mimic ‘lost pet’ posters. I installed the flyers on telegraph poles in nearby streets and documented the changes over several weeks; the flyers are incorporated in the exhibition as a take-away. The photomontage generates a dialogue between the portraits and flyer installations combined within the images, which speculates on human-ibis cohabitation and belonging in the city.

I describe this work as art-geography, which responds to themes familiar in both contemporary art and cultural geography. Historically, animals have been a notable subject for art, and in current practice they have attained new significance. Concern about conservation and environmental change over the last forty years has renewed artists’ attention to animals, producing work that contemplates relations between humanity, nature and culture. Human-animal and nature-culture interactions are key themes in cultural geography, too, and over the last decade a number of geographers have turned to contemporary art practices to explore these relations anew. Art-geography, in combining insights and techniques from contemporary art and cultural geography, transcends the boundary of knowledge and practice. My work adds to the inter-disciplinary dialogue that speculates on shifting human-animal relations.

Installation photograph, COFA D Block, 5 June 2014.

Ibis Portraits: Towards Ecologies of Belonging

Ibis Portraits: Towards Ecologies of Belonging, 2014.

Digital photographs, 29.3cm x 43.9cm.

These are portraits of the Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca), taken at colonies along the Cook's River, Sydney. The Australian White Ibis is a native waterbird, whose traditional habitat is inland wetlands, such as the Macquarie Marshes. Due to persistent drought and environmental change in these habitats, these birds have established large colonies across Sydney over the last thirty years. The Australian White Ibis has become a city-dweller, a figure of urban nature. 'Urban nature' foregrounds the interpenetration of natural and cultural systems. Does the Australian White Ibis have a right to the city? How can humans and ibises better co-exist?

These ibis portraits are studies for the series The Ibis and Us: Ecologies of Belonging. That series, and its installation work, more purposefully interrogates human-ibis relations in a context of ecological and geographical change. This background series, Ibis Portraits: Towards Ecologies of Belonging, foregrounds ecologies of ibis-wetland relations in the city, with portraits of Australian White Ibises found at wetland sites along the Cook's River. The portraits aim to stir up speculation on human-ibis relations, by confronting human viewers with the non-human gaze of the ibis. Their eyes penetrate, asking questions about who belongs in the new ecologies of urban nature.

Topographical Weave

Topographical Weave #1, 2014.

Digital composite of original photographs, book cover, 16.6cm x 16cm.

This digital artwork visualises the intersection of topography, corporeality and masculinity. The image writes embodied masculinity into the globe, while simultaneously writing the world onto male bodies. The work is a composite of original photographs: a mural on King Street, Newtown, Sydney, Australia, depicting the globe with the Australian continent centred (an atypical rendering of the world in itself, which usually centres the Anglo-American sphere) and a Roman statue of demigods fighting, found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. In using these original images from vastly different historical and geographical settings, the work thus also intersects antiquity/modernity and old/new worlds in speculating about the co-constitution of masculinity, place and embodiment. The piece is published as the book cover image for Masculinities and Place (2014, Ashgate, edited by Andrew Gorman-Murray and Peter Hopkins).

Beyond the Golden Hour

After Sunrise, 2014.

Digital photograph, 17cm x 25cm.

Before Sunset, 2014.

Digital photograph, 17cm x 25cm.

In photography, the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset are 'the golden hours', when light is 'magical'. This is a human idealisation of light and atmosphere, and works against the assemblage of light, atmosphere and landscape across the diurnal cycle. In Beyond the Golden Hour, I sought images from the hour after the golden hour of sunrise and the hour before the golden hour of sunset. I wanted to capture the magical assemblage of light and atmosphere at these mundane times of the day during late summer in Sydney. The summer light glances off buildings and suffuses through foliage (of the weeping bottlebrush). It enhances the colour and tone of natural and built elements of landscape, and radiates its own colour spectra.