Photography as a Medium: Assembling Found Images

Description

The exhibition is thematically anchored in the artistic practice of working with found objects (conceptually inspired by originators Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso) to explore new possibilities and subvert assumed restrictions around concepts of art production, challenging the perceptions of photography as a medium.

Among them are Wang Ningde’s No Name series, inspired by Chinese urban management officers who erase the content of ‘illicit’ and ‘inappropriate’ graffiti and fly-posting by painting over them. The captured photographs of this state practice of erasing information are captured and the artist select fragments computer software to create a new picture, in doing so broadens the imaginative space while questioning the processes of image production.

Also featured is Lei Lei, who often uses pre-existing material to create works. The artist’s collage Movement and Coming Soon series which are shown in Assembling Found Images use a photo album originally taken as reference points for painting, and China’s official pictorial propaganda from the cold war as their starting points respectively. The photos which each existed in a specific context with specific meanings are broken into smaller elements and combined into a new image system. As the original meaning is lost, a new meaning is gained and a new horizon for examining the meaning of images is created.

Through the reconstruction of images, the three artists utilise or strip away the contexts, pressures and illusions embedded in existing images and objects to reveal new visual interpretations of the image, of history, nostalgia, collective human behaviour and identity.