This abstraction of salt + coastal granite rocks was made whilst I was on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko amongst some coastal rocks west of Petrel Cove on the southern Fleurieu Peninsula of South Australia.
It had been a hot summers day and the small pools of water that usually lie amongst the granite rocks from the high tide in the morning had evaporated. I made a number of studies of these salt abstractions that afternoon.
This picture is part of an ongoing series that depends on certain weather conditions along the littoral zone.
It was made on a poodlewalk during a a wild storm event. The tide was high, the wind was gusty and strong, and the waves were very high. It was quite dangerous making my way around the rocks west of Petrel Cove. We--Maleko and myself--- had to proceed with great caution.
I made a video of the surging waves using my iPhone 6 whilst on this afternoon walk. The waves swirled around my feet as I sat on a rock making the video.
This picture was made during the recent stormy weather that took place in early May. This particular abstraction refers back to this earlier foam abstract. Both of these are abstract in the sense of the image being removed from its context.
However, there is a context to this abstraction which removes itself from all context. The picture was made during during the Covid-19 lockdown. It is not often that there is foam amongst the coastal granite rocks. It is generally happens during a big storm, but the waves from the surging seas usually prevent access to most of the littoral zone. The foam doesn't hang around for that long either.
During the Covid-19 lockdown I have been photographing in my local area: mostly exploring and photographing within a few kilometres from our home in Encounter Bay. The photography has included both digital and film.
The emphasis has been on the film work--initially medium format, then large format--- so that I am able to participate in an online exhibition of film photography hosted by the Friends of Photography Group in Melbourne.This is an exhibition of film photos made during the lockdown.
Abstraction is usually seen as a removal, or a paring away.It is an abstraction from something, or stripping away the context. This is usually seen as a moving away from figuration and representation, and with Formalist modernism (Greenberg) also a moving away from other media (literature and narrative). The modernist desire/drive is for a purity of art forms expressed in terms of specificity of pure visuality and painterly form.
This repression of literature to achieve purity in the specific medium of painting through erecting a wall or grid (Ie., Rosalind Krauss) between the arts of vision and the arts of language collapses with the shift to post-mediums and the intermingling of media.
Made whilst I was on an late afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko:
It was in mid-winter when the photo was made.
This abstraction was made on an early morning poodlewalk with Kayla during the late summer of 2019
I have never been able to find the site since. I do know the rough area in which this granite is located--its just west of Petrel Cove-- but I cannot find the detailed site amongst the different granite formations in the area.
Another in the salt abstract series:
These salt ponds are very ephemeral. They only appear during the hot weather when the heat of the summer sun dries out the various rocks pools after a high tide.
This abstraction of a granite formation was made just west of Petrel Cove when I was on a poodlewalk with Kayla in the early morning:
I was working nearby on a series of salt abstractions at the time--mid February 2019--and I saw this rock formation.
Another image in the sea abstraction series that emerges from my daily walks along the coast of the southern Fleurieu Peninsula:
This was made in the summer of 2018 whilst on an afternoon poodlewalk with Maleko. I recall that I got very wet as a large wave swept over my feet and legs.
Below is the converted black and white version of the digital file:
There is not that much difference between these two interpretations.
As can be seen from the earlier images in this series---- here, here, here and here--- I do struggle with this series. Their emergence from my daily walks indicates that these abstractions reject the common view that abstraction is a withdrawal from the modern world, almost a safe house for art. Maybe this series refers to chance---standing on the rocks amongst the swirling sea waiting for the formation of a visual form/image?
This abstract photo was made in January 2019 whilst I was on a coastal poodlewalk along the southern Fleurieu Peninsula with Kayla. The picture or image was made in the early morning near from Petrel Cove in the summer light.
The word 'image’ often gets tied to the arbitrariness entailed in individual perception and opposed to the external solidity associated in the vocabulary of ordinary language philosophy with the ‘picture’. Susan Sontag held that images don’t tell us anything, they remind us what is important. This implies that the ‘image’ as a type of inner perception, or mental idea, impression or memory.
This can be interpreted along the lines that an image that exerts a hold and that lives beyond its medium presupposes an agent who is engaged by it, i.e., who finds it meaningful or significant. An image is a sensuous experience of meaning that organises a world. It possesses a communicative force that is surplus to its perceptible form.