The Big Picture
Artists find something special in the natural world.
Overview
The Sun is pretty impressive. Just all by itself. But Penelope Umbrico’s 12,149,179 Suns from Sunsets from Flickr (partial) 4/9/2013 draws down hundreds of them to make a back-wall-spanning collage of crepuscular moments. Her suns are bright, luminous, full. And usually the molten yellow of a movie sunset. They’re very much solar art as found objects, but their radiance still grabs you. Without wanting to belittle her skill, there’s something in common with kitten photos, in that no matter how many, and no matter how small, sun photos make you feel good. This same joy in the everyday, similar pleasure in the essence of things and a bit of collation of found objects are more or less the theme of Stills Gallery’s the Big Picture.
Gemma Messih’s I’ve only just realised how important you are (to me) lays an image of a mountain against a very real tiny mountain of grey rock. It’s a juxtaposition of two symbols: an image symbolises a mountain, a little rock pile sympbolises a mountain. She also offers two freestanding landscapes canvases which have been pierced by a thrown rock. Though there’s a thematic unity to that, there’s more of a sense that the images’ subjects have wandered off to have a look at other images on display. Like Hogwarts portraits on a slow day.
Patrick Pound’s found photos are a low-key highlight of the show. In Same place different people old, found photos of men and women sit at a cafe. They’re arrayed like a film strip, and playing with the photographer. The images seem tidied and curated, but once again it’s ordinary things that draw you into their little, animate worlds. Here, it’s the smiles. So many, so long past, so happy. Women pause and laugh on their lunch break, men smile and kid about with a luxurious allowance of afternoon joy. Portrait of the wind takes this further, filling a much larger frame with a bit less than 200 black and white, found snaps of people at leisure. And buffeted by the wind. The arrangement is skilled, but it’s the (literal) realness of people themselves that is most compelling. Their leisure is decades old. But there’s a life, a seriousness, a smuggled joy in each face by the bridge, on the beach, in the parade.
Along another wall, Tim Webster’s Flow holds a waterfall, flowing mist, flowing video noise. In the print room, Drew Flaherty’s Loading Cycle 1 is a clever loop of video art which joins the everyday cycles of the computer and the moon. Upstairs, Daniel Connell’s Lightless arrays a menagerie of ordinary lights, flickering in a menagerie of places.
Stills Gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday from 11-5. Press the buzzer to get in. Image: Loading Cycle by Drew Flaherty.
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