Giotto in a Potato Chip

During the restoration work of Giotto di Bondone's fresco at the Bascilica of St Francis of Asisi, a face has been discovered in the clouds after being unnoticed for 700 years. There is some discussion about whether it is of the artist himself or even of Dante (neither of whom seem to have been very pretty from the existing portraits). Educated theories however centre around a mischievous and perhaps spiteful inclusion of this devilish likeness by the artist. Another possibility is that this depicts a belief at the time that demons hid in the clouds to block souls ascent to heaven, which I like.

Giotto may have interpreted this fascination for the discovery of images in the everyday world, however the original depiction of the mortality of St Francis has now been a little overshadowed by the scramble to get a glimpse of this 14th century equivalent of 'Jesus in some beer foam.'

We are reconnected to this medievil schizophrenia in contemporary life through funny shaped carrots and potato chips. Not much has changed, although A-list celebrity now shares the iconic spotlight with Jesus and the Virgin; science now defines it as Pareidolia, (the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist. Dictionary.com) citing Elvis in a potato crisp as evidence. It's an example of our need to imbue the banality of the everyday with meaning where there is often none, in the hope that there is more and as an audience of art the responsibility for meaning will often fall on us.

There is a collective participation in the acceptance of an emotional resonance that contemporary photographic artworks demand from us. Many works present a nothingness to receive our projections of meaning in the collection of pixels that form representations of reality. I play with this idea in Lion Hunting in Essex, where the undergrowth of a small Essex village is a potential hiding place for an escaped, large wild animal. I am thinking more famously of the most expensive photograph in the world, Andreas Gursky's Rhein II auctioned for 4.3 million dollars in 2011. It dares to elevate the everyday to the extraordinary and encourages us to see the world in a new way.

I have included by own little Gursky, the first photograph I remember taking when I was 8 years old in 1974.

Here are some examples supplied by the Huffington Post.

Rhein II © Andreas Gursky, 1999

The Miniature Train of Pedras del Rei © Richard Ansett 1974

Lion Hunting in Essex

On Sunday 26th August a couple's reported sighting of a large cat like creature in the fields surrounding St Ostyth near Clacton-on-Sea, Essex provoked a massive police response. Search teams including two helicopters with thermal imaging equipment scoured the countryside followed by a media circus.  A spokesperson stressed, the incident was not being treated as a hoax. Mr and Mrs Atkin who spotted the creature said "Whatever it was, it's definitely still out there."

Assisted by Mr Richard Brown, I embarked on a safari to seek out the resonance of this creature in the Essex landscape. We drove up to the area the day after the media circus; the search had been called off but the police still considered it a serious enquiry. There was barely any evidence of the previous day's events except a residual and palpable tension projected onto the terrain.

When we finally returned home, I found Richard Sawdon Smith (winner of the John Kobal Awards 1997) standing in my kitchen. We spoke about the presence of absence in landscape.

This project explores the experience of reality affected by circumstance, these landscapes were the same before the media reports of an escaped wild animal, they are imbued with the fear of the observer. it is an observation of the impossibility of reflecting reality and truth when we are consciously and unconsciously influenced. These ordinary landscapes were for a short period of time transformed into a dangerous Jungian jungle, observed through the filter of our most primal instincts of fight and flight.

Transposed into the gallery environment, away from the zone of perceived danger, the images become a record of the influences affecting an observer. This series is a further discussion on the nature of Pareidolia as it applies to how we view art as audience; the dichotomy between what is there and what we perceive to be there as unique and should not be assumed to be shared.

Update 10.08.2015

I went into the National Gallery in search of an unrelated reference for another project and came across Henri Rousseau's 'Surprised!' 1891 in Gallery 45. Whilst Rousseau gained knowledge of the jungle serving as a regimental bandsman in Mexico in the 1860s, this painting is thought to be inspired by visits to the Paris botanical gardens.

Image_4600, Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012

Image_4528, Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012

Image_4531, Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012

Image_4496. Lion Hunting in Essex © Richard Ansett 2012