CHLOE SELLS – SENESCENCE
2013-06-10Using the stylized and archetypal format of the still life, the objects within the body of work are symbolic surrogates, coordinates embedded with notations of exploration and movement. Relics of archaic civilizations, organic matter in varying states of decay, elements of the quotidian, the utilitarian, the exotic and the occult constitute the carefully-constructed totems. Without conferring a specific history, the objects summoned together within each image create rather than re-create narratives. Sells’s arrangements become less a document of an actual place, and more an allegory of her relationships to those places.
Each of the works is a unique analogue C-type print, handmade by Sells, using conventional negatives overlaid with colour and patterns in the darkroom, subverting the tradition of the meticulously created tableaux. The darkroom process itself is physical, dynamic and time-consuming, constituting a further mapping of the journey. The artifice created through unusual colour and warped light is used to heighten tension between the familiar and the exotic. Image fragments and oddly cut prints have been sketched and painted upon so that each outcome is unique.
Exhibition runs from June 21st to August 31st, 2013
Michael Hoppen Gallery
3 Jubilee Place
London
SW3 3TD
