Inverness Museum & Art Gallery, until 22 March 2008

TAKING its inspiration from ‘The Immortal’, a short story by Jorges Luis Borges, Birmingham-based artist Michelle Lord has produced a series of thirteen large photographic prints currently on show at IMAG. Her scale model constructions are beautifully photographed and laboriously constructed, elaborate labyrinths of chiaroscuro which echo in sentiment the fallen civilization of Piranesi’s 18th century etchings.

Extreme light and dark give the minute scale of Lord’s models an epic quality as we follow the wanderings of a lone figure in Roman centurion dress through a fictional city made familiar by classical/historical architecture. Whilst her technique, a “hybrid of photography, sculpture and architecture”, and the intellectual premise of her explorations are interesting, the overall effect of the series as a piece of visual art is dulled by repetition.

The artist’s insistence that “everything is entirely hand built” with no use of digital manipulation, coupled with the use of her own image (photographed in costume and positioned within the narrative of the scale models as protagonist) is an interesting comment on artistic integrity and image-as-truth. The wanderings of Borges’ main character reflected in images of the artist moving through a constructed world of fantastic architecture is a journey governed by the ambiguity and disorientation of shadow rather than illumination.

Untitled “9” captures the spirit of the lone figure seated on a remnant of a fallen column ingrained in tones of sepia, shadow and stone. Untitled “7” with its series of prison-like arches, Untitled “10” where the figure dwarfed by monumental columns stares up into a canopy of darkness, and “Lord’s figurative and metaphorical tightrope walk in Untitled “6” suggest a world of endless enquiry rather than absolute certainty.

It is the ruins of antiquity rather than a living city that is the stage here and the tone of the whole sequence is set in the opening painterly image, Untitled “1”; an orb like ceiling eclipsed by shadow, suggestive of the meeting of eye, lens, built environment and human consciousness, peering into a void.

The whole concept of immortality through human expression deserves further exploration and not just through the artifice of photographed sets. It feels like Lord’s exploration ironically stops dead in two dimensions even though it utilises the visual language of three. My feeling is that a fourth is required in relation to the subject matter, a transcendent element in the sequence or narrative, though not literal.

While the entwined disciplines of sculpture, architecture and photography are a fascinating methodology, Lord’s creation of a “new imaginary city” is rooted in mortality rather than in aspiration and ideal, which ironically are the cornerstones of classical sculpture and architecture. That this architecture has not survived the passage of time does not necessarily dilute its intent as the visual expression of an idea or ideals.

As a contemporary artist’s exploration of immortality through “celluloid and silicon” is strangely avoided in favour of wandering among ruins in a quasi-romantic fashion. In a modern age we need not necessarily look to the past to see ruins. I am almost more intrigued by what the artist chose not to engage with in this series of images than what is depicted.

Lord’s technique is quite cinematic and as a sequence these images read very much like movie stills. I would love to see this artist explore the moving image further. Her foundation as a painter and compositional skills as a photographer are obvious and previous work such as ‘Four Corners’ (a three year project which began in 2000) show enormous promise.

It’s Lord’s own fictions that need development in terms of the artist’s visual journey. This exhibition feels like an illustrative facade with the hint of something great still hidden in the shadows.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

Links

• IMAG