A-M Gallery, Martin McEwen

Martin McEwen

High and Low, Near and Far

5 February—22 February 2014

Typically postcards depict places of singular beauty and communicate the sense of ‘being there’ at a point in time. Each of the images in this work are individual communications that collectively represent a response to place based on an accumulation of visual images and experiences.

Each postcard is intended to be a standalone miniature landscape that is complete in itself. However, they nevertheless interact with the images in their environment.

In single viewpoint landscapes, the viewer stands outside the image - the subject is portrayed as objective, unitary, and unchanging. Earth, sea, and sky are seen by a single person at a single point in time.

In these images familiar elements of a landscape are taken and constructed into a multifaceted image in order to try to represent how one experiences place. We look up at the sky, then perhaps a tree or the ground in front of us, and perhaps at the same cloud again; but the view has changed ever so slightly in just those few moments. Multiple perspectives are presented so that we simultaneously view the landscape from within and from above. Our gaze is directed in a circular sweep along the tree trunks up, into and around the rainforest canopy. We gaze down at the forest floor while looking over the landscape at a distant hill.

As the eye shifts between different focal points, a sense of movement, both spatial and temporal, is created. The subject must be interpreted, the viewer bringing something of themselves into the visual process.