Exhibitions

Layers and Shadows © Sandra Curtis

 

Layers and Shadows (2013): These images explore the death of the ideal-self. Beneath this persona lie many faces. Looking inward, who looks back? Peering into the shadows, we catch a glimpse through the layers to the depths of soul where we are marked by life, where the personal touches the boundless universal. Like pieces of memory, but not the entire memory. Fragments and nuances of our unloved lives, that resonate in body, heart and soul. 

Created on the iPhone, in this age of the ubiquitous and widely shared "selfie", these images go beyond the surface.

Each image is processed through layers of different treatments using various phone camera applications. Each process alters the image, enhancing some aspects, degrading others, shifting tonality, colour, highlights and shadows, creating a different emotional impact from the original. An impact that can be surprising, confronting, ephemeral, mysterious. Who has been discovered here?

This contemporary process continues the age-old practice of artists creating portraits of the self. These self-portraits explore the notion that we all have hidden faces.

Exhibited at Colac Otway Performing Arts and Cultural Centre (2015), and the Ballarat International Foto Biennale 2013 Fringe Program.