Foster’s new series of photographs, Kirkwood, depict fantastic scenarios that occur in everyday settings. Unlike much of her past work, the human figure is absent in these images. But traces of its existence can be found in the vacant domestic architecture and in the events that take place within it. Tapping into the tradition of magical realism, Foster depicts the "unreal" in an utterly realistic manner. Foster began exploring these ideas in a previous series of work, From Morning On, which took its inspiration from the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky and was exhibited at Vox Populi in 2009.
New Work at Vox Populi in May 2010
Julianna Foster and Lori Spencer, Fair Ophelia
Fair Ophelia marks the first collaboration between Julianna Foster and Lori Spencer. While examining, interpreting, and elaborating on the life and death of the character Ophelia, the ideas generated from Ophelia's story will explore the myriad-layered portrayal of this woman seen through the eyes and perspective of the three fates from Greek mythology. The investigation of these characters will be realized through photography, video, and text.
Julianna Foster is a Senior Lecturer in the Media Arts Department at The University of the Arts. Lori Spencer is an Associate Professor in Printmaking at The University of the Arts. As a printmaker, Lori Spencer incorporates traditional print such as screen-printing and lithography with new innovative digital processes to create imagery that reveals an ongoing investigation into and with the medium. Focusing primarily on the photographic image, Julianna Foster's most recent work features distinct pictorial narratives. Drawing upon her interests in cinematography, Foster presents a combination or series of images--sometimes sequential, sometimes not--that take the form of framed photographs, a book, or video. This exhibition was made possible by a Faculty Enrichment Grant from UArts.
Julianna Foster and Lori Spencer, Fair Ophelia
Fair Ophelia marks the first collaboration between Julianna Foster and Lori Spencer. While examining, interpreting, and elaborating on the life and death of the character Ophelia, the ideas generated from Ophelia's story will explore the myriad-layered portrayal of this woman seen through the eyes and perspective of the three fates from Greek mythology. The investigation of these characters will be realized through photography, video, and text.
Julianna Foster is a Senior Lecturer in the Media Arts Department at The University of the Arts. Lori Spencer is an Associate Professor in Printmaking at The University of the Arts. As a printmaker, Lori Spencer incorporates traditional print such as screen-printing and lithography with new innovative digital processes to create imagery that reveals an ongoing investigation into and with the medium. Focusing primarily on the photographic image, Julianna Foster's most recent work features distinct pictorial narratives. Drawing upon her interests in cinematography, Foster presents a combination or series of images--sometimes sequential, sometimes not--that take the form of framed photographs, a book, or video. This exhibition was made possible by a Faculty Enrichment Grant from UArts.
a lovely film.
tarkovsky said of ivan's childhood:
"generally people's memories are coloured by poetry. the most beautiful memories are those of childhood. of course memory has to be worked upon before it can become the basis of an artistic reconstruction of the past; and here it is important not to lose the particular emotional atmosphere without which a memory evoked in every detail merely gives rise to a bitter feeling of disappointment. there's an enormous difference, after all, between the way you remember the house in which you were born and which you haven't seen for years, and the actual sight of the house after a prolonged absence. usually the poetry of the memory is destroyed by confrontation with its origin"
tarkovsky said of ivan's childhood:
"generally people's memories are coloured by poetry. the most beautiful memories are those of childhood. of course memory has to be worked upon before it can become the basis of an artistic reconstruction of the past; and here it is important not to lose the particular emotional atmosphere without which a memory evoked in every detail merely gives rise to a bitter feeling of disappointment. there's an enormous difference, after all, between the way you remember the house in which you were born and which you haven't seen for years, and the actual sight of the house after a prolonged absence. usually the poetry of the memory is destroyed by confrontation with its origin"
From morning on, Foster’s second exhibition at Vox Populi, represents the artist’s ongoing interest in creating a series of interrelated photographic images. Influenced in part by cinema, and most recently by modern Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky, Foster explores how the individual image can transcend its own limits, and by association, provide the opportunity for a pictorial narrative to unfold.
The next few posts are selected film stills from films that have influenced my thinking and inspired my work.
Film Stills, La Jetée-Chris Marker
They are without memories, without plans. Time builds itself painlessly around them. Their only landmarks are the flavor of the moment they are living and the markings on the walls.
Chris Marker, La Jetée
Selected Film Stills
Like no other medium, film, through it’s inherent qualities, has redefined how we experience images, and ultimately how we participate in that experience. With such a powerful medium at their disposal, filmmakers have created fictional, but convincing, worlds that explore—perhaps even press—the boundaries of our perception. They challenge our disbelief and, in some cases, upend our conception of traditional narrative; how it functions and what it reveals and/or conceals. Through the manipulation of the image, linear and non-linear modes of narrative, literal and metaphorical meaning, is constructed. This has, it could be argued, impacted human perception itself: The sheer pleasure of looking is often so seductive that we willingly suspend our disbelief and negotiate between what we know to be true and what we desire to be real.
Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo
Jean Luc Godard, Vivre Sa Vie - My Life To Live
Michelangelo Antonioni, Deserto Rosso - Red Desert
Cinematography is, of course, a direct extension of photography; the creation of a series of filmic images that combine to form an apparently seamless, single ‘image,’ or event. However, if we acknowledge the mechanics of the cinematic image, we come to understand the enormous potential of the post-cinematic image and how, because of its relationship to the history of cinema, the photographic image in particular has been imbued with a new sense of possibility. The enduring legacy of photography, coupled with that of cinema, has set the scene (so to speak) for artists who came of age during the mid to late twentieth century; heirs to the golden age of cinema. Consequently, this generation of artists took its cues from popular cinema, challenging the assumption that photography is merely about “seeing”. Instead, these artists take the approach that photography, as much as cinema or any other art form, for that matter, is about rendering what they have imagined, visible. Rather than merely “capturing what they see,” this generation of photographers employs a variety of techniques to stage what appears to be a fleeting moment, but which ultimately reveals itself to be fantasy—fiction!—disguised as pictorial realism .
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ali: Fear Eats Soul
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