Mz Pink, 1995
BA Fine Art Chelsea College of Arts 2018
I use digital infrared photography to oversaturate landscapes into pink worlds. False-colour infrared photography has a dark history, as it was invented by the military for camouflage detection in the 1940s. However, the aesthetics of pink can trigger contradictory emotions because pink is associated with many politically charged stereotypes. I have found pink to be a challenging colour, it creates strong reactions and complicates artworks in a way no other colour can. My intention is to subvert pink’s usual position in the world and use infrared in a different context; I feel I am able to rediscover its abilities to be ambiguous by creating work that documents nature differently.
I have travelled far and wide to find trees that I am drawn to; they are each unique and capture the seasons from dormancy to blossom. The trees in my work feel powerful and even though they may look unnatural, they have an essence. They become strange beings, they seem alive, more present and their limbs entwined with ivy become like veins.
My image’s hint towards a futuristic environment where technology is beginning to seep into nature and appears to be malfunctioning at times. Capturing truth, representing our world as a pink wonderland has also begun to generate inaccurate constructions, regurgitating a different version of our world. I’m interested in moving beyond landscape realism and infinite reproductions of our world, to a place where nature is warped and edited, where I have the power to manipulate nature, to render it into something else.
Sometimes the traditional shape of images is put into jeopardy by the jagged form of the image, playing with the way nature is never symmetrical, which is what makes landscapes picturesque. Moreover because pink is deeply connected to the idea of beauty, a concept that exceeds reason, by creating landscapes that are beyond reality they become sublime.