CIG HARVEY – HOLDING THE BLUE
2017-09-11‘Holding the Blue’ will showcase 30 photographs from Harvey’s career, taken between 2003 and 2017, as a prelude to the publication of her new book ‘You an Orchestra, You a Bomb’ in November.
Often highly orchestrated, Harvey’s early works created a fantasy version of her own life experiences. Using herself as a model, each image was self-referential and meticulously mapped out to include specific metaphors, symbols and content. As her work progressed, Harvey introduced increasing amounts of spontaneity and branched out to include other models, such as neighbours, her daughter and husband. In Harvey’s most recent work, which focuses on her home town in Maine, mundane locations and events are depicted with strange colour combinations or unexplained light, which lend the images an unsettling air.
Heavy with implied narrative, each photograph is a vignette the visual equivalent of a short story. Seemingly random images of people, places and things, when combined, suggest the passing of time and seasons. The subjects of Harvey’s photographs are usually concealed, whether it be through careful cropping, distance or her use of lighting for example, a child behind a curtain, a woman obscured by the dappled light through a car window or a figure facing away from the camera into the sea. The symbols used throughout Harvey’s work suggest a complex jigsaw to be pieced together by the viewer.
Opposite – Wolfhound, Hope, Maine, 2012
Exhibition runs through to September 16th, 2017
Beetles+Huxley
3-5 Swallow Street
London
W1B 4DE
