This website is not an inventory of work when my professional career began in 1971 as a painter. The work shown is a representative selection of work created between 1998 and 2014. This was when I became most fully engaged in photography and mixed media creating crossing narratives within the work’s totality.
(Please refer to my other website at denisgillingwater.com which is representative work begun in 2008, when I began transitioning out of mixed media oriented approaches to singular photographic contexts. In 2014 the work became fully engaged as to its representation currently.)
The photographing within urban environs was, and still continues to be, the primary means for developing my work’s ideation. Cities have evolved from containing 5% of the world’s population to 60% in the last hundred years. The work’s emphasis is in exploring the accelerating manipulation of our cityscapes and its effect on our psyche. Issues of alienation, displacement, aggression, consumption, and control are some of the concerns. Our “figure/ground relationships” within urban contexts are increasingly askew.
This website’s images are manifested in five types of forms: singular photographs in individually designed frames, multi-image prints with words, hand made photo cases, modular wall works, and installations incorporating CCTV surveillance systems with miniature “billboarded” photographs and DVD video imagery periodically. In whatever type of form, the photographs are in black and white. Also, all of the frames and installation components are painted in black and silver. This enhances the art work’s harder edge urban context.
As with many artist, including myself, computers and digital photography have had a pronounced impact on working processes and resultant work. However, unlike most artist, the CCTV surveillance system has been another primary technology in advancing my work’s ideation. The system makes for a highly expanded field of vision. The TV monitors are not only broadcasting images in front of the viewers, but from around the totality of the exhibition space, and often with other viewers included. The “crossing narratives” of imagery is not only important in the installations, but often influences my other art forms. At times, viewers will choreograph their spacial movements in the gallery together and even extend this activity into a “comparison of notes” among themselves.
Brief Bio: Please refer to my other website at: denisgillingwater.com