EXHIBITIONS / THE MYTH OF THE REAL

23.09.2010 to 16.10.2010

The current discourse around the medium of photography discloses a multiplicity of positions. Here, it remains contextually explicit to the dialogue of painting. The camera and how it communicates its reality and presence declares a confluence that annuls the traditional perceptions of the media, acting as database and conduit to the condition of painting.

Each image is explored as one explores the surface and image in painting. Faces from the present and past; scaled down buildings that are

presented on the traditional support of painting, reconfirm its history.

JB

Bloomfield’s position is one of acceptance, almost symbiotically, of the photographic medium within his own painting practice. This is no trivial detail. Photography has been the single most important influence upon the painted medium since the use of oil paint. Within this artist’s practice I see the photographic functioning as painting, importantly, outside of the dialogue that is dictated by modernist, through to Postmodernist, considerations upon the act of photography as a visual institution.

I certainly can’t help but wonder if the functional shift within this medium, through digital formations like Flickr and Photobucket, cheaper cameras and printing, phone cameras, and more to come, liberate visual artists, like Bloomfield, to exploit, or explore, other implications outside of these past dialogues? If so, photography then has emerged as another visual tool at the disposal of the contemporary visual artist. Hierarchies have became destabilised and artists are much more willing to negotiate an idea using whatever visual language is out there toward their own purposes. This varies from the Modernist hangover where a responsibility, or allegiance, toward a particular medium or style is indistinguishable from holistic praxis.

Justin Balmain

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