Composure: Natural Selection
Composure: Natural Selection New work by Nicole Robson
The work in this exhibition continues my examination into the theatricality of the suburban domestic space.
I have stepped in closer, allowing the wallpaper and décor to come forward, releasing it from the parameters of a ‘room’. The only human presence in these environments exists in the worn out furniture and carefully selected ornaments.
I have been more emphatic in my choices of composition, patterning and colour, feeling like these works needed to exist within their simplicity. The framing takes place with in the camera, selected to flatten the picture plane and created a more abstracted view of these internal spaces. I wanted to highlight wallpaper designs, the glint light on water in a picture on the wall or shine of vinyl on a well-worn chair.
The unifying element in all the work is the relationship between nature and the suburban home. Although one of our main aims is to keep nature out of homes, we remove ivy from the bricks and mortar and fix leaks in a roves, we sweep out the dirt and clean away the cobwebs however despite this we both historically and to this day hang wallpaper of flowers and creeping vines, display pictures of wild horses, oceans and forest and place flowers in a vases. These ‘elements’ are all within our control. I have chose distinctly artificial floral arrangements and highly decorative landscapes. The type of pictures and objects that seam quaint at a shack or chosen for irony but were once loved and cherished or purchased from a department store to cover a hole in the wall, either way they evoke memories associated with place and experience.
The format and presentation of the work in this exhibition represents the photograph as an object, like a Polaroid found in an old book. As technology changes the ‘Polaroid’ has become more than a photography but an object itself, it can still be scanned and shared but the print itself is a one off, it exits the camera as a single shot of a moment that has passed. The sense that an instant printed photo can become a valued object is an idea I associate with the content in my images, I am reordering, representing and re-injecting value or beauty into décor that is of a time past. I am honouring the memories of a home, decorated to please and be admired by its occupants.