Ashleigh Garwood - Under Erasure

ASHLEIGH GARWOOD Under Erasure 3 to 29 September 2016

ASHLEIGH GARWOOD Under Erasure 3 to 29 September 2016

The photographs in Under Erasure were taken in Iceland, where the landscape and winter light are extremely affecting and remote. The resulting images consider our expectations of nature and the landscape and how these have been pre-determined though our relationship with images.

The works are not the result of an experience recorded with the eye.

Instead they are a mode of translation, a photographic reality that sits in duality and contradiction from the physical reality it stemmed from.

▶ ARTIST BIOGRAPHY (b. 1986. Sydney, NSW, Australia) Ashleigh Garwood is an Australian emerging photographic artist working primarily in silver gelatin. She is interested in analogue and alternative photographic processes, often combining or blurring the lines between these approaches to image making. Obtaining a Bachelor of Art Theory from UNSW College of Fine Arts in 2009, Garwood has since undergone further artistic training in silver gelatin processes with Blanco Negro Studios and collodion + ambrotype processes with George Eastman House.

The body of work that introduced Brenda May Gallery to Garwood, and was also the artist’s first solo show with the Gallery, was the arresting photographic series Of Other Spaces (2014–2015). These works toy with historical portrayals of Australia’s landscape that present it as simultaneously rugged and controlled.

This suite consists of native scenery captured using analogue photography, which has then been digitally manipulated to accentuate symmetry and clarity. The resulting works are an eerie yet romanticised view.

This series saw Garwood enter a major corporate photographic collection and be listed as one of 2016’s “Debutantes” in Art Collector Magazine; a list that indicates exceptional young talent arriving onto the arts scene.

2016 has seen Garwood’s works move forward. While her current body of work still has the irresistible depth of Of Other Spaces, it was influenced by a period of living in Paris on a residency with the Cité International des Arts. This experience was gained by winning the 2015 Eva Breuer Travelling Scholarship, coupled with being awarded an Australia Council for the Arts grant in 2016. Previous opportunities and awards include a residency with Brand X in Sydney’s Chippendale (2014), as well as an Artstart grant (2012) and a Jump grant (2011) awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts.

Garwood has already been included in curated group exhibitions that reflect her position as a rising talent.

In 2016, her work has been selected for the MAMA Art Foundation National Photography Prize (Murray Art Museum Albury) and Silver & Salt at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre. This is following Garwood’s inclusion in the major exhibition The Alchemists: Rediscovering Photography in the Age of the jpeg at the Australian Centre for Photography (2015), Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre’s Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (2015), the international billboard exhibition Dresden Public Art View in Germany (2014), Uncover at the Perth Centre of Contemporary Photography (2011) and being selected as a finalist in the National Youth Self Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra (2010, 2011), among other exposures. Garwood’s photography is currently held in the Macquarie Group Collection and is illustrated in the recently published Phaidon Press Wallpaper* City Guide - Sydney.

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #1’ 2016, inkjet print on Hahnemühle watercolour paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 76 x 102cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #2’ 2016, inkjet print on Hahnemühle watercolour paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 76 x 102cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #3’ 2016, inkjet print on Hahnemühle watercolour paper - diptych, edition of 3 + 1AP, 102 x 152cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #4’ 2016, inkjet print on Hahnemühle watercolour paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 76 x 102cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #5’ 2016, C-type print on metallic paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 127 x 152cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #6’ 2016, C-type print on metallic paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 127 x 152cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #7’ 2016, C-type print on metallic paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 127 x 152cm

Ashleigh Garwood, ‘Under Erasure #8’ 2016, C-type print on metallic paper, edition of 3 + 1AP, 127 x 152cm

B R E N D A M AY

G A L L E R Y

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