Simon Harsent Explores the Effect of the ‘White Cube’ In Playful Photos

How does an object change once it's presented on a plinth in a museum? How does a pile of bones differ from a crowbar, a trio of glass vessels, or a nude, when each is placed on the same simple white cube and viewed from a uniform angle? These are questions raised by New York-based artist and photographer Simon Harsent’s latest series, White Cube, a meditation on both stillness and change.

In Harsent’s own words, "I'm quite intrigued by how keeping a locked-off camera position but changing a single element in a photograph can change perception, ideas and assumptions." A successful photographer working in advertising, Harsent has long been fascinated with change. A decade ago in the series Salt Moon his camera remained in a fixed position, capturing the moonlit ocean on a slow exposure. Approaching the theme of change from another angle, 2009's Melt is a spectacular landscape series capturing the slow decay of icebergs.

So how did the artist decide what items to present on the austere white cube? Harsent says they were selected "based on what I thought they could achieve in both their aesthetic appeal and their ability to offer up a myriad of options of stories; not in a literal sense, but each object could potentially have a story behind it. After all, most things in museums are just objects with a history, so by replacing the object each time, a new story is potentially conceived."

Historical readings and assumptions collide in possibly the most loaded image of White Cube, a beautiful nude black woman relaxing on the cube as though she were just another museum artefact. How did she enter the mix? After shooting the objects, Harsent wanted to add a human element. "At one point I was thinking of having someone’s body painted like a statue, but I felt that was the wrong thing to do, and I decided to shoot the girl as she is in the final image." As with the rest of this series, the photograph's meaning is supplied by you.

What's inspiring Harsent right now in the art world? He's taken with abstract expressionism, and with Richard Serra's current show at the Gagosian in New York. "I love [Serra’s] use of space," he says. "It feels like you are walking in a three-dimensional Rothko painting." He also enjoyed the Richard Avedon exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. "The one thing that struck me were the imperfections in the images that make them so special. There is one image in particular of Bjork where you can see an impression that stockings she must have been wearing has left on her legs. Today that most likely would have been retouched out by an art director and in doing so, the image would have lost the most valuable thing in it."

You can view the White Cube series in full and more of Simon Harsent's work on POOL Collective's fancy app, downloadable from iTunes. White Cube is on display at The Pool Collective Redux exhibition at The Black Eye Gallery, 138 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst, Sydney, from December 5 to 23.