Kirsty Lillico & Janet McGifford - Opposite and Above

Opposite & Above is an exhibition of contemporary photographic works by Kirsty Lillico & Janet McGifford on display from 13th February - 27th February 2010.

While each artist has a distinct body of work, both are exhibiting under the same exhibition title.

Janet McGifford’s work examines the complex relationship photography plays in determining the nature of the tourist experience through the collective visualisation of the tourist gaze. She employs the use of digital photographic processes and the manipulation of travel photography of tourist destinations sourced from the Internet.

McGifford’s photographs are reminiscent of the feathery brushwork of Impressionist painting. The Impressionists were, in part, reacting to the rising popularity of photography. They sought to capture the temporal and subjective nature of seeing, as opposed to their perception of the camera’s mechanical recording of one moment in time. Using the tool of Photoshop, McGifford introduces a similar unfolding sense of time back into the subject of the landscape.

She says, “I am interested in how travel photography can play a part in directing an act of engagement between tourist and site. The inherent relationships between representation, authentication, standardisation and documentation are explored, and bring together ideas of the archival and the sublime through the discovery and engagement of popular travel sites such as the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China”.

Using both sculptural and photographic procedures, Kirsty Lillico’s work extends the conventions of dress and its functionality, in order to examine a human dilemma between the desire to protect a state of interiority and the need to perform one’s identity to the exterior.

In Opposite & Above, Lillico uses digital photography to document a series of toiles; hand-made calico garments used in the process of clothing design. These garments are modeled for the camera by a subject whose identity is withheld through the concealing nature of the garments, and by gesture.

The formal construction of the photograph – lighting, composition, setting – suggests the psychological and social function for the garments’ use and manufacture, and has been informed by the work of 17th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.

This work creates an engagement with clothing as an agent of protection through the interaction between classical painting references and the contemporary context for the work.

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