Remains to be Seen

Remains To Be Seen, 2014, HD Video projection, 1:46mins, No sound

Remains to be Seen consists of a series of photographs and a video that explore the abandoned painting studio of WW2 War Artist Alan Moore who turned 100 in 2013. Whilst celebrating the tactility of paint, the photographs also reveal wartime experiences within the medium of paint as seen through photography.

Alan Moore was a close relative and one of only two surviving Australian official WW2 artists who witnessed the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Photographed in his abandoned studio, Remains to be Seen explores the remnants of a life long painting practice in a studio closed off since he last worked in there ten years ago at the age of 90.

Created over two years as part of my VCA Masters work, the images explore whether photography can convey the perceived weight, both of physicality and haptic responses, so often contained within personal artifacts. Paints, both used and pristine lie around his studio as an archive of practice. The images created for Remains to be Seen allude to the present whilst exploring fragments of the past in a studio that has effectively become a Still Life.

Alan began sketching as soon as he entered the gates of Bergen-Belsen but was quickly told to photograph because no one would believe his drawings. Concerns surrounding the evidential nature of images, dedication to practice and different ways of seeing are explored, both through the medium of paint as well as photography. Enlarged to human scale, the photographed tubes of paint explore and celebrate the tactility of paint whilst echoing what the artist has witnessed.

Remains to be Seen exhibition view at Rubicon Gallery, Melbourne