ARTIST STATEMENT

Beverley Southcott  

These three photo media seascape works are of the Somerton Park/Glenelg foreshore area in Adelaide, South Australia, near where I live. They are based on my morning walks along the sea front – I view this time as a space for contemplation and reflection – as apart from my busy, daily working life.

These photo media images reference the notion of the 19th century sublime such as depicted in the seascape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich that placed emphasis on the largeness of the sea and the sky and where the land and the human image is minutely portrayed.

In these minimal photographic images I wanted to depict the sparseness of the sea and the sky. The foreshore and the human figure are minutely referenced in these works, to re-emphasise that sense of ‘wonder, awe and newness’ within this local, urban seaside environment.

These images are not traditionally reflecting the 19^th century sublime, instead they are a subtle, subversive response to materialism and a desire to escape this, through the depiction of anti consumer and corporate logos.

This contradictory response may also help to allude to a ‘temporary’ or provisional sense of the sublime which transcends or transforms the banal and the ordinary in the ‘presented reality’ of our every day lives.