Value

Value 1989 colour photographs

'...there is a fascinating tension between these images' explicitly referential origins (in John Berger's seminal Ways of Seeing television series) and their deliberately ambiguous forms. Mediated almost to the point of "abstract" self-signification, half glimpsed and residual references remain trapped within the dual phosphorescences of pixel-grid and emulsion. The tense relationship between Fereday's products and their source stretches the iconic signifier/signified relationship inherent in photography to breaking point, tearing a space for lateral movement. ...This transience becomes in itself seductive, since the nature of desire is not predicated on the presence of its object, but on its lack, on the understanding of its absence.'

Patricia Piccinini and Peter Hennessey, exhibition review 'Value', Eyeline, Winter 1990