Vendredi 13 Mai 2016 11:04:03 par Nour Alahiane-lechevalier dans Expositions

For Patrick Pound, what started out as a form of research - the collecting and collating of vast archives of vernacular material, photos, books and objects - morphed into his art practice. He upcycles images and objects that have been discarded. Cut loose from their original creator and purpose, Pound gives them new contexts and meanings. In so doing, he asks us to consider the nature of photography; the creation of meaning; and the human urge to make sense of the world around us.

For Pound there is more truth and insight to be found amongst collections of photos, than there is in trying to make new ones. In creating connections, he is also able to explore ideas, phenomena and curious human tendencies that can’t be captured in a single frame. How do you photograph the wind or air, for instance ? Photography and Air 2016 consists of numerous found photographs of people and things that are in some way affected by the wind; from a candle in the breeze to a hovering plane, a yacht’s billowing sail to a young woman at the beach, her hair blown by the breeze. Images are selected from a vast array of sources that include defunct newspaper archives and abandoned family albums. While disparate in origin, together they form a prosaic yet poetic portrait. Pound’s interest in the idea of photographing something you can’t see extends to other works in this exhibition where he pairs photographs to capture the time between them.

© Patrick Pound

Pound’s other artworks have included a collection of fallen or sleeping figures in People Who Look Dead But (Probably) Aren’t and a revaluation of a classic photographic faux-pas in The Photographers Shadow. There are as many possible permutations as there are stray photographs or human foibles – limited only by the artist’s storage space and his imagination.