Still Life

Zan Wimberley

01.07.2015 - 24.07.2015
Opening 01.07.15 6-8pm
Artist Talks 23.07.15 6-7pm

Still life is a show straddling the divide between the heart breaking seriousness and utter absurdity of mortality.

Roland Barthe talks about the ‘perverse confusion’ in photography, that between two concepts: the real and the live.

Artificial flowers share that same perverse confusion, and when they’re used to adorn graves and sites of mourning, which is where the flowers in the images were sourced, that perverse nature comes into sharper relief.

A nod, both aesthetically and symbolically to the 17th century pronkenstilleven and vanitas paintings, these still life photographs and stereoscopes also explore the nature of vanity in the old sense - the meaninglessness of life and transient nature of all earthly goods and pursuits.
In a more contemporary sense it also taps into the general mood of apathetic nihilism that is permeating through pop culture and the first world in the wake of global warming, ISIS, persecution of asylum seekers and politics both nationally and internationally.