Trace Elements

 

Exhbition│展覧会について

contents

Trace Elements: Spirit and Memory in Japanese and Australian Photomedia encompasses both the traditions and the innovations of photomedia practice, from black and white photography to interactive video installation. It considers the ways in which contemporary artists are addressing the intrinsic relationship of photography to time, memory and the metaphysical association of the medium to phantasmagoria and the semblance of lived experience.

Curators Shihoko Iida of Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and Bec Dean of Performance Space in Sydney have collaborated towards an exhibition that explores the cultural resonance of the ‘trace’ in photography; from the photograph as a historical document and private memento; through popular cultural associations of the “Ghost in the Shell”; to photomedia technology’s ability to construct alternative environments, review and revise images of the past and fabricate new memories and experiences. Trace Elements considers the influence of photomedia, both within and beyond our two cultures, on one's notion of self, one's consciousness as well as our personal and collective histories.

 


[About exhibition title; Trace Elements]


The word 'Trace' and photography have been connected conceptually since the invention of the medium. Photography as a process registers and captures light at specific moments in time, resulting in a trace or a physical semblance of that moment. In science “Trace Elements" refers to minute but essential chemicals that exist in our bodies, assisting our functionality. Interpreting this term, the curators consider the practice of fabricating new memories through photomedia as positively geared towards identifying one's idea of self, one's consciousness as well as our personal and collective histories.