Blossom
Blossom is an installation piece intended to convey an experience, a confusion and an intrigue with notions of narrative.
In psychogeography, the term dérive is used to define an unplanned journey through a landscape, with the goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience. Dérive literally translates into English as ‘drift’. This, often urban, landscape is navigated by an individual who allows the aesthetics of the surrounding environment to influence both the direction they travel and the choices they make. The individual explores an environment; either known or unknown, allowing their own desires to act as their compass.
Blossom explores my own experience navigating a landscape, one that was both physical and psychological. There’s a story here, a story that we have all experienced. It is of a time that is both end and beginning.
It was always my intention to explore the photographic narrative, but crucially methods of interfering with the narrative itself. There is a coherent experience throughout the work; a fixed narrative of an interaction, yet there are many experiences that could, might and should have branched off in other directions. The photograms, produced at night using organic materials, act as a visual punctuation. They are both directly related to and referencing the photographic, yet somehow removed from it. Their lack of information and their deliberate abstract qualities serve to ‘clear’ the viewer’s mind of the previous photographs. They allow a reading of the work to be both influenced and unaffected by the other images encased within the installation.
Blossom refers to both an unbound beauty and a short-lived experience. It is a precursor to something greater, yet enjoyed in it’s own right because of this. Blossom has a very definite lifespan; it’s always destined to make way for something else.
Adam Whatton completed the BA(Hons) in Photography at the University of Brighton in 2011. His work has been exhibited at the Lighthouse Gallery in Brighton and as part of several group shows.
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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© Adam Whatton
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Installation View, Lighthouse Gallery, Brighton 2011
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Comments (1)
Based on an idea from the situationists’ study of pschogeography, Blossom by Adam Whatton is the visual manifestation of the artist’s dérive through an urban landscape. Adam has used photographs and photograms to create a narrative; the images themselves beautiful, quiet and mysterious. The contrasts of light and dark, ethereal and ominous transport me somewhere familiar, yet his is not my journey. Displayed on the wall as an installation piece, the work is arranged in such a way that the viewer is invited to take their own “drift” through the images and visual cues.
Jane Noble, Photoworks