The Sublime is Now

The Sublime is Now
1992
type C colour photographs
1100 x 450 mms


'Susan Fereday's photographs are composite images abstracted through a variety of techniques beyond easy comprehension - 'rephotographs', according to a recent turn of phrase - which raises the question of the origin of these images. There is no clear single referent for these pictures although one suspects their origins lie in advertising media. Fereday describes them as, 'fragmented and abstracted forms (which) act as "floating signifiers' ascending into metaphysical sublime through a transcendence of the referent."

... Any correspondence they may have to different institutional practices (say, art and advertising) - and by their coextension in the obdurate material of all photography, manifest in the repetition of a single material effect throughout the entire series. This is what Carolyn Barnes refers to in the catalogue as a "surfeit of blue tones" (in fact, orange as well). In the process of rephotography, this surfeit of tone is remaindered in the refusal of photography to represent much else in the material aspect of its constitution in the act of reconstituting itself, a kind of feedback (qua acoustics), in which the effect is returned to its source and amplified/exaggerated with considerable sensuous yield.'

Stuart Koop, exhibition review, Art + Text #43, 1992


 
 
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