Heads swivel and roll in a bewildering blur; a faceless figure with long blonde tresses cavorts around a domestic space. Bears brawl in an underpass; a chimp slumps, desolate, in a lonely place. A rock face, barren and beautiful, imposes itself on the black sky that looms behind it: the natural growth that clings to it, preternaturally bright.
These are magical worlds, mysterious and marvelous, yet modelled in a medium that, according to convention and tradition, mimics reality as we perceive it and understand it. Not so: tantalizing sur-realities that ordinarily belong to the realm of dreams and nightmares are, instead, made manifest in our conscious world through the skill of four photographers, who have learnt to compose and manipulate their images to suit their own creative needs. In doing so, they feed and fuel both our fantasies and fears.
Lara Clarke-Wardle, Mark Prethero, Ed Smithson and Rebecca White have used photography and post-production digital technology to ‘make strange’ reality; to seduce us with imagery that preys on some shared, cultural, visual repertoire. What they suggest is not the everyday but, rather, those weird happenings that occur in one’s peripheral vision: an alternative to all that is rational and easily explained. The photographs act as portals to parallel worlds, making material the desires and dreads that haunt our subconscious.
Strange liminal spaces, both sensuous and oneiric, these images are wonderful – in all senses of the word. Their power lies in their potential to deliver us from the petty and banal that dictates so much of adult life.
Jane Fletcher
Artists websites:
www.markprethero.co.uk
www.laraclarkewardle.co.uk
www.rlwhitephotography.carbonmade.com
www.edsmithson.carbonmade.com
