Richard Orjis: The Garden (2010)

Richard Orjis has quickly risen to critical acclaim with seductive, atmospheric and beautifully dark photographs. ‘The Garden’ focuses on a group of works that use the repeated motif of the orchid. In these works the organic flower form takes on humanistic, fantastical and erotic qualities.

There is sense of danger and darkness in these works but also the reality of natural wonder. The orchid’s beauty beckons the viewer, drawing them closer to the flower and ultimately closer the dark void surrounding the stems. ‘A Kind of Hush’ is enticing and seductive, using beauty as a device the purple flower lures its prey. ‘Sisters of the Moon’ displays a single stem heavy with flowers, like a group of beautiful women, brightly coloured and as vivid as the moon when full, capturing the viewer's gaze.

In my fictive, mythical world a contemporary pagan, earth-worshipping cult, endeavours to make links with the natural world. Nature here is beautiful and dark, a dangerous spectacle; yet still the starting point of mystical experience. Art history and popular culture; fact and fiction; fear and lust; past, present and future collide. (Orjis 2010)

In the works ‘Spleen (2007) and ‘Gorse and Orchids’ (2007) a muddy figure emerges from the darkness. Engulfed in flowers the figure appears as if part of some sort of ritual, where the boundaries of nature and man have become blurred. Orchids morph into facial features; an eye, a mouth, where does nature end and human begin?

Orjis’s photographs are complex in construction and technically brilliant. Their use of colour, detail and composition make them highly aesthetic and their exaggerated scale renders the subject-matter larger than life. Mysticism, timelessness and magic are present in these works as the real world merges into fantasy.

Event listed by Milford Galleries

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