| Mireille Astore | ||
Premonitions |
In Premonitions I am exploring the theme of childhood in contemporary society.
Premonitions, is an exhibition comprising digital photography and sculpture.
The images are created and displayed using a dialogical narrative, which sets
out to question what it means to be a child in the age of globalisation, wars
on terrorism and the disintegration of the real.
Anne Higonnet in her book. Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of
Ideal Childhood says: “Images of children guard the cherished ideal of
childhood innocence, yet they contain within them the potential to undo that
ideal.” I believe the archaic protective role a parent plays is essentially
underpinned not by love but by fear. Therefore, the images in Premonitions echo
Higonnet’s concern in that they remind us of the fragility and brevity
of life and yet are contaminated with the seductive power of an aesthetic that
is both exquisite and uncompromising.
In Premonitions I am focusing on childhood outside the boundaries of love, play
and laughter. In fact injury, illness, and predators seem to me like shrines
to mortality in a ritual of evasion, repression, and abjection. The images I
create paradoxically blur and identify these themes.
I attempt to position the art at the heart of the digital era by transforming
the photographic image into a three dimensional mosaic of colour, texture and
theme. I use lush and rich surfaces reminiscent of Renaissance paintings in
order to give the images a historical context and to position the works in an
evolutionary continuum. As such, the primordial parental fear is rendered visible
through the inherent intensity of the images.
©2001 Mireille Astore