Columbus Exchange (Not in my Garden) 2019

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Not in my Garden (2019) Photographic Print on copy paper, wooden sticks, projection onto the surface (26 seconds looped)

“At the time I could no more believe my eyes than I can now trust my memory.”
― W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
 
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Gaerd (2019), Digital transfer photographs on copy paper, wooden sticks
210 cm (w) x 1190 cm (h)

 

Projection of 16mm film onto folded paper substrate, 3 mins looped
SEED POWER
A new project exploring the cultural, social and political exchange between Europe and the Americas at the turn of the century and its impact on our encounter and relationship with plant matter, gardens and trees today. The contradictions of this colonial exchange and its implications have repercusions in the light of strict laws prohibiting the introduction of ‘foreign’ species into the Americas and vice versa- . A metaphor for immigration and migration issues today and an ironic and political look at the prohibition of species being brought back to their country of origin.

Another Land, Kingston Museum

 

 

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Lleva y Trae (2019) Acetate transfer prints on fabriano paper, analogue photographs (180 cm x 160 cm)

 

Los Orígenes (2019) reversed looped video, digitalised 16 mil, waterfall

 

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No lo contradigas, es la verdad (2019) Photo etchings, acetate prints (90 cm x 70 cm)

Another Land

Another Land is an exhibition and events programme showcasing experimental visualisations of place in art and design research. Bringing together practitioners from across Kingston University, the Royal College of Art and University of the Arts London, contemporary works and events have been integrated into Kingston Museum, engaging with themes of past and present, real and imagined, identity and community.

The exhibition and programme draw links between creative practice and anthropology, archaeology, architecture and geography, encompassing video, drawing, sculpture, installation, performance, photography and print. This is extended with a series of screenings of moving image works presented at the Stanley Picker Gallery, exploring concepts of human movement, environmental narratives and emerging worlds.

Another Land is generously supported by the London Doctoral Design Centre, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Kingston Museum and the Stanley Picker Gallery

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/another-land-exhibition-opening-and-private-view-tickets-57523184393

VIA arts Prize, Brazilian Embassy

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Pasos (2018) Digital Transfer prints, screenprint, wooden frames (250 cm  x 180 cm)

VIA ARTS PRIZE (Pasos, 2018)

The vastness of the Andes is one of South America’s most iconic and enduring panoramas. Photographing the Altiplano, I was drawn to it as a place where myth, memory and history collide. It was here that in 1818, San Martin set out to liberate the southern cone from Royalist rule, pitting his troops not only against colonial armies, but also against the sheer scale of the mountain itself. Franz Van Riel ‘s two metre oil painting ‘Paso de los Andes’ (1948) draws on this history, while his moutainscapes stretch out into white snowy peaks overwhelming the figures depicted. In my installation I create multiple views of the Andes as fragmented scenes that recall a sublime encounter with the immeasurable, and in so doing, create a dialogue through time with the past. Made up of printed film stills that abstract and pixelate the surface, and wooden supports that frame the view, they look to question the colonial gaze, the tourist encounter and our constant need to ‘take in the view’ from a single perspective. In this way I look to give them more human proportions, providing a multitude of possible encounters with the Andes in the space of the gallery.

 

Tierras áridas, La Nau Cultural Centre, Valencia, and Museo de Bellas Artes, Jaen SPAIN 2018-2019

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Resistant Grounds (2019)- Collaborative printed book: Victoria Ahrens, Altea Grau, Victoria Arney, Jo Love, Sumi Perera (60 cm x 30 cm)

including lithography, photo etching, relief and embossed print, etching and screen printed pages

Designed and crafted by Victoria Ahrens and Altea Grau

Tierras Aridas// Arid Lands

Collective publication project

Curator: Antonio Damian/ Antonio Alcaraz Mira

Project

An international Print project that reflects on new systems of production, diffusion and commercialization of book art editions.

Tierras Aridas takes the landscape as its concept, juxtaposing land with that of deserted spaces, abandoned or marginal spaces that conform to a dystopian imaginary. These spaces offer distances that are impossible to bridge or in the case of Mexico and the United States, opens up a different interpretation depending on which side of the border the artist inhabits.

The project proposal adopts, as a methodological model, assembled and collective publications designed to facilitate a collaboration by artists who live in different cities or countries. This project aims to promote the exchange of information and introduce us to different printmaking studios, associations, Schools of Art and Universities in Spain, Mexico (Oaxaca) the US (Phoenix, Arizona) and the UK (London).

Altiplano series

 

 

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Paso a Paso (Cordillera) (2018) Photoetchings, folded 50 cm (w) x 30 cm (h)

 

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Horizonte (Fragmentos) (2018) Photo etchings on fabriano rosaspina paper,  shelf 80 cm (w) x  30 cm (h)

 

 

Athens School of Fine Art – Wonderer

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Wonderer aims to establish connections between the U.K and Greece and considers how different cultural, philosophical and historical interpretations of our solar system can be re-imagined from a contemporary art platform.

Wonderer will also house 30 works that were successful in our Stars open call. These works, each of stars, have been selected by Fronteer and, as well as being beautiful pieces of work in their own right, will also help establish a cohesive and immersive exhibition.

Wonderer will be held at Athens School of Fine Arts from 17th – 20th May. The exhibition will form part of Platforms Project 18 – a renowned independent art fair that takes place yearly in Athens.

Artificial Things, ARB Cambridge

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This piece, Allá, is a press transferred photographic print of a double exposure on Japanese paper that explores the nature of landscapes as an artificial construct. It forms part of Victoria’s continued research into the experience of place as a fictional and narrative encounter. Using historic and contemporary alternative photographic processes she looks to hand made surfaces to explore and observe latent and haptic traces of the world around us. Notions of instability and uncertainty are translated into photographic pieces as an allegory for the passage of time and the failings of memory.’ from the catalogue at the Alison Richard Building exhibition, Artificial Things, curated by Shutter Hub. Open from the 3rd of November to the 19th of January.

LAPC, Ugly Duck, Alternative Photography exhibition and Royal Academy Summer Show

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Lightness of Being is a photo etching created from combining an analogue silver print positive with a digital photograph, which was then exposed and developed onto a metal plate in the landscape itself. Working in situ meant allowing entropic traces to become imbued on the surface of the plate, to mark my encounter with the disappearing landscape. The ephemeral beauty of the place belies its traumatic history as a place of political disappearances. In using both historic and contemporary processes I am looking to depict a new imagined landscape that creates a dialogue through time.

Part of the Analogue Festival London, exploring how analogue photographic, film and sound-based processes interact with digital technologies, curated by Melanie King and Diego Valente of the Alternative Photography Collective London.

In addition this print was exhibited at the RA Summer Show 2017. As an invited artist this year I was selected by Rebecca Salter to participate in the RA Summer Show. This piece was hanging in Room V of the Royal Academy. They were available in an edition of 25 each, 60 cm x 45 cm.

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/summer-exhibition-2017

Burning with Pleasure #3, Photofusion and Seen Fifteen Gallery (September)

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BURNING WITH PLEASURE #3
Artists’ Books Exhibition
Exhibition Dates
1 – 16 September 2017 | Photofusion
8 – 30 September 2017 | Seen FifteenLaunch Party
8 September 2017 | 18:30 onwards | Seen Fifteen
From September 1-16, Photofusion will be co-hosting the third annual Burning With Pleasure. Curated by Archipelago, this is an exhibition dedicated to artists’ books. It will take place simultaneously at Photofusion and Seen Fifteen. Here at Photofusion, we will be looking at the different stages and steps artists take when developing their book projects. We will be exhibiting test prints and book dummies by Raymond Meeks, Highchair Editions, Rick Pushinsky, Lewis Bush and Artists Books Cooperative. Included in the exhibition will be a small number of our members’ dummies, self-published and handmade photobooks.
As a part of the programme, we will be hosting a book-making workshop with Artists Books Cooperative, a young persons’ bookmaking workshop led by Sayako Sugawara (ages 8-13), and an ‘In Conversation’ on book production and distribution with Magali Avezou, Christiane Monarchi and Lewis Bush. Also as a part of this programme, Magali will be available to review artists books, finished or in progress. These 40 minute advice sessions will be offered to Photofusion members for £25 (£30 for non-members).
For the sixteen days of this programme, the gallery will function as a reading room, so please come in, put your things down, don the white gloves, and explore the possibilities of this medium.
 

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River Dialogue, Victoria Ahrens (open book)

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The Lost Exploitation Journals, Victoria Ahrens

 

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The Perfect Place, the book

anthropo(BS)cene: when the cock crows three times (2017)

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C-type print of Larsen ice shelf crack, 90 gsm paper

Part of the exhibition Le Coq Artiste, at Q Park, 38-42 Whitcomb street, London

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Weather Vain (2017) Film still, video projection 5 mins looped, car park wall

chineseopen2THE WEATHER VAIN PROJECT

Climate change denial is on the rise and with Donald Trump’s administration made up of a group of people who are ALL sceptical of the science behind global warming, and his withdrawal from the Paris Climate Deal, we need to push the message of the anthropocene in a post-truth world.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL. GO ROGUE. RESIST. REPEAT. REWIND

Halley VI research centre in Antarctica is closing for Winter because of crack in the Brunt Ice Shelf (2017)

Massive rift in the Larsen ice shelf has gained extra 10 km since January 1. If it breaks off it will create the biggest drifting iceberg in recorded history

2016 was the hottest year on record.

London air pollution at highest levels since records began.

climate.nasa.gov/evidence

Badlands national Park tweets

#climatechangeisreal

Auratic translations

 

PeltzGallerytwoplatesPart of my PHD show at the Peltz Gallery, Birbkeck School of Art. Deconstructing the disappearing landscape and reshaping it. Installation views of some of the iterations of my thesis on the translation of forms from analogue to digital. For a read through my thoughts here is the abstract:

ABSTRACT

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This research is centred on the notion of landscape as a construct of marginal and multiple dialogues. It is a project that originates from a rediscovered family album of (fading and yellowing) photographs of the Latin American landscape at the turn of the 20th century. In particular a set of photographs that centre on the Paraná River in Argentina, a place where myth, recent history in the form of narratives of the Desaparecidos (those ‘disappeared’ by the military junta 1976-1983) and memory collide. An early analogue photograph of the river has sparked a series of creative interventions that explore the interstices between photography and printmaking, fragmenting the initial image in order to create new hybrid photographic prints using photo-etching and photo-transfer processes, projections. The return of the material to the flat surface of the digital is of critical concern, as the ‘uncanny’ surface is turned into a haptic object more in keeping with printmaking practices and early pictorial photographs. This leads to questions about the pictorial outcomes of these experiments, their affective resonance and the enactment of the hand-made, where touch and ‘noise’ return to the surface of the print as a resistance and response to discourses of acceleration and reproduction, remembering and forgetting. The theoretical and practical methodology is cyclical, and the multiplicity of layers of discourse appears both in the printed multiple and in the multiple voices I use to discuss the project in writing. The research is timely, as digital practices and the internet continue to accelerate the dissemination of the networked image, and speed up our relationship to photographs and prints, I aim to slow them down, in order to discover what is lost or gained in the process, both in practical and theoretical terms. In the ruin of the analogue photographs I use, therefore, a new ruination and expansion of the surface occurs as I develop my photographic plates at the site of the river Paraná itself. In the encounter with the landscape, the forensic traces of Argentina’s political disappeared (now part of an ongoing forensic anthropological investigation at sites along the Paraná) create latent marks on their surface and these invisible fragments serve to embed disruptive historical narratives into the process of making itself, as the river becomes the site of convergence. These geographical and metaphorical bodies of water that have been distorted, disappeared and ‘ruined’ (both by a history of dictatorship cover ups and photographic memory) are able to reappear as latent and liminal image-objects in an open ended encounter with multiple narratives of the river.

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