Gathering Shadows, 2015
Exegesis component of practice-led research project undertaken through the School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, awarded as PhD, 2015
The practice-led art research project Gathering Shadows: landscape, photography and the ecological gaze investigated the ‘tragic’ visual poetics of a speculative ‘ecological gaze’ at a time of ecological crisis. Employing a unique methodology of cameraless outdoor nocturnal photography of live invertebrates, the work replaces the distancing objectification of lens-based capture. I investigate a symbolic order in which a deeply indexical process reveals an insect umwelten of uncanny intimacy and semiotic presence in which insect abjection operates as an index of place and x-ray like shadows allude to the multiple ‘tragedies’ of the human and non-human ecological predicament…