Terry Boddie: The Residue of Memory

Selections from The Residue of Memory

Terry Boddie

September 21 – November 10, 2013

The Residue of Memory.

These images

represent the exploration of ideas regarding place, history, memory, migration, exile, birth and rebirth. They trace the development of these ideas over a period of 15 years.

As you look at the images you will notice the development of the ideas in the images themselves. As the images go through these various states of transformation they accumulate technical processes, iconographies and narratives. Africa, The Caribbean, the Atlantic Ocean, North America, Space, Time are all points of departure.

Alternative photographic processes, such as cyanotype, Platnium Palladium, Liquid Light, gum bichromate in combination with traditional materials such as pastels, oil stick, graphite, ink; and more recent processes such as digital photo transfer all combine to create a unique visual iconography. – Terry Boddie

Terry Boddie

spent his boyhood on the island of Nevis

in the West Indies and migrated to the US at age 15. When he returned “home” 16 years later as a young adult the impact of coming of age in two very different worlds began to seep into his awareness and became the watershed of his work to date: an exploration of memory, migration, myth and idenity.

Boddie is a photographer, mixed media artist, printmaker, book maker, kite maker - more precisely visionary. While skilled and versed in traditional methods of these genres he is constantly pushing the envelope to achieve his desired result. “What I do is essentially utilize the entire history of photography. I use…’alternative processes’ … developed in the 1800’s, all the way up to digital techniques.

Whatever the idea requires is what I use.” This willingness to experiment has lead to the unique qualities of his images – complex in composition, both fragmented and layered, literally and conceptually.

Boddie’s images are beyond mere photographs with their ability to “mythologize” memory. Through his careful use of the juxtposition of images and media he is able to invite us to think about other ways of understanding deeply contradictory truths and to consider where our own role in the shaping of identity and collective history lies. continued on page 26

Selections from “The Residue of Memory”

Maze 2009 Gelatin silver emulsion, oilstick on paper 18X24 inches

Time and Place 1 2009 Gelatin silver emulsion, digital transfer on paper 24X17 inches

Time and Place 2 2009 Gelatin silver emulsion, digital transfer on paper 24X17 inches

Conduit 2008 Gelatin silver emulsion, pastel on paper 22X30 inches

Conduit 2 2008 Gelatin silver emulsion, pastel, digital transfer on paper 30X22 inches

Crypt 2000 Gelatin silver emulsion, oilstick, soil on paper 30X45 inches

Crypt (study) 2000 Gelatin silver emulsion, pasel on paper 17X24 inches

Dark Days 1999 Gelatin silver emulsion, acrylic, charcoal on paper 14X17 inches

Elementary 2007 Cyanotype, gelatin silver emulsion on paper 10.5X11

Fly Away Home 2008 Gelatin silver emulsion on paper 24X17 inches

Journey 2000 Gelatin silver emulsion, oilstick, pastel on paper 30X22 inches

Pulse 2007 Cyanotype emulsion, digital transfer on mylar 18X24 inches

Real Estate 2001 Gelatin silver emulsion, pastel on paper 9X11.5 inches

Rehearsal 2007 Gelatin silver emulsion, charcoal, digital transfer on paper 17X24 inches

Routes 2000 Gelatin silver emulsion, oilstick, digital transfer on paper 29.5X34 inches

Spirit House 2 1999 Gelatin silver emulsion, pastel on paper 24X17 inches

The Long Way Home 1 2009 Gelatin silver emulsion, pastel, digital transfer on paper 22X30 inches

The Return 1 2007 Gelatin silver emulsion, oilstick on paper 30X22 inches

Tomb 2010 Pigmented paper pulp 22X28 inches

Traveler 2012 Cyanotype emulsion, raw mica pigment on paper 13X17 inches

Utterance 2009 Gelatin silver emulsion, chalk, pastel on paper 30X22 inches

Village Project 2000 Gelatin silver emulsion, pastel on paper 30X45 inches

continued from page 4 These works intimately explore his personal relationship to: Place and how it shapes us. There is an “old tradition in the Caribbean of planting a tree on top of where your umbilical cord is buried…I’m still very connected to that place…[still] there’s this sense that you don’t quite belong in either place.”

History utilizing icons of Caribbean cultural legacy – currency, stamps, plantation records and historical records to challenge colonial “truth” verses both factual and experiencial truth.

Memory and the origin of language, our ‘genetic relationship’ to iconography and the plasticity of relationship to frozen moments in time through re-referencing.

Migration not only from geographical place to place but through our internal space traversing our grasp of our individual and collective sense of idenity.

Exile pointing us towards transition through recognition of the impact of ‘partial’ and ‘marginalized’ truth as it sheds light on the inevitable Death of demoralizing historical mistruths’ by deflating it’s glorifing icons with the imagery he counteracts it with.

And finally Rebirth – the promise of a more intergrated and aware idenity.

– Mary Z

“

Knowledge is something that is both given to you AND something YOU discover.

“

photos © Natasha Guzman

Inquiries: Please contact 73 See Gallery at 973.746.8737 or email us at gallery@73seegallery.com. Thank you.

Catalog design: Mary Z, 73 See Gallery & Design Studio

73 Pine Street, Suite C Montclair, NJ 07042 gallery@73seegallery.com 973-746-8737 www.73seegallery.com u Hours: Regularly Noon til 6 or by appointment. Closed Mondays.

73 C Pine Street Montclair, NJ 07042 Catalog 5 Š 2013