This is an ongoing project exploring allegory and how we are inundated with images in our technological age.  Seeking to impede that deluge of images and prolong that moment of uncertainty and openness, reconsidering significations and notice different associations and meanings.

Simulacrum series

Individual screen prints with collage as an installation

The Simulacrum series seeks to - divert and convert the original significance and context of found images, creating allegories and a new narrative.

Simulacra series prints

Devices and Divisive series prints

The Devices series seeks to - redefine our associations with signs and how we relate to machines, power and society.

(Reportage and Devices are linked and similar in character and link with 'News- stand' also)

Reportage series prints

The Reportage series seeks to - ponder and wander around alternative interpretations of events.

(Reportage and Devices are linked and similar in character and link with 'News- stand' also)

Simulacrum Residency Project Introduction

In our technological age we are inundated with images.  The significance of these images may become indistinct or intangible to us as the deluge proliferates daily.   How do we coexist with information outside of our own experience?  We might ask how complete or coherent is this relentless tide of images.  Intrigued by the way representation works artist Steve Joyce has taken this as the starting point to explore new printmaking ideas, while on artist residency at the University of Suffolk.  He apprehends the flow of images and creates his own little world of associations, imaginings and curiosities.

Simulacrum, meaning an imperfect copy, is the basis for this project which re-presents fragments of found images with new readings and associations.  The artist allegorises the images, texts and other information, by reprinting copies in series or by layering, to create new associations.  Allegories often take the content of a narrative and bring that meaning along intact, as a new narrative emerges.  But these images often deviate from the original meanings, as if they are misreadings, and prompt the viewer to make their own interpretations.  The project questions ideas about the original and the copy, and the work produced opens questions about how we communicate.  The images here do not present fixed meanings on a single subject, but grasp at fleeting glimpses before they collapse.  These images need unravelling.

noun

noun: simulacrum; plural noun: simulacra; plural noun: simulacrums

• an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute.

Quotes:

"a representation without a 'guaranteed' referent in the world" Foster et al. 

(Relating to the writings of Roland Barthes, the simulacrum is defined as a copy without an original.)

 “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” - George Bernard Shaw
 

News-Stand series prints

      Awaiting new photographs to document this

The 'News-stand' (working title) seeks to - capture the momentum of image overload and inconsistencies in readings.  (other possible titles; Front Page or Tabloid)

(Reportage and Devices are linked and similar in character and link with 'News- stand' also)