Sinead Natalie Byrne Mason
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Blindfolded
Blindfolded explores our elusive, often inconclusive interiority through a series of portraits, still lifes and abstract photographs. Identity is a slippery subject with ill-defined borders, but I have limited my project to exploring two facets: the environment, which affects how people define themselves, and the portrait, which showcases the performance of the self. The title, ‘blindfolded’, evokes a similar reaching beyond what is visible to what can be perceived with the remaining faculties, including intuition and emotions. The title of this project privileges these undervalued impressionable sensibilities. The viewer is invited to imaginatively feel the curves, crevices and varying textures of the images. The project is strongly influenced by the Modernist school of thought, particularly the literary and Surrealist movements. The titles of the individual images were generated using the often absurd and arbitrary alternative text on Microsoft Word. The titles do not describe what is in the image but rather disrupt the representationalism of conventional titles. They are meant to provoke the viewer to consider how our reliance on language shapes the ‘identity’ of the image.Around the same time as Modernism was emerging out of the rubble of World War One, the offset lithography press was invented. It incorporated elements of photographic technique into printmaking. The combination of lithographic and photographic prints in Blindfolded pays homage to the relationship between these two disciplines. Both processes rely on set techniques and mechanics to create a series of identical images. To maintain a sense of cohesion between these two ways of making, I have combined elements of each discipline. I printed photographic images using offset lithography and I used a silver-black ink colour, which references the silver gelatin photographic prints. I also weighted the space of the bottom borders of my darkroom prints in line with the printmaking tradition and I have created editions of images to reinforce the idea of multiplicity, which is apparent in lithography and printmaking as a whole. These elements place the prints into conversation but did not merge them. Each process has different by products.
The slight blur in some of the photographic prints and the freckles on selected lithographic prints are both results of hand printing either in a darkroom or with a press. These images are traditionally two-dimensional and smooth on the substrate. The more conventional image form of Blindfolded lends itself to an uncluttered and clean curation. The orderly methodology and curation employed provides breathing space for an otherwise conceptually porous project. Each wall of the space functions as a whole, comprised of smaller parts which find form in the images. The wall upon which Circles of Confusion is placed is divided into eight equal sections fragmented in an orderly grid. The borders around each fragment emphasise this decision. They draw the viewer into the blurred and abstracted world within each image, rather than overwhelming them with a chaotic presentation and perhaps even running the risk of underwhelming this subtlety. The two walls facing each other in a salon-style formation represent an exploded version of the grid that appears in Circles of Confusion. In the same way as a mind map, these walls allow for more freedom of play. The fourth and final wall explores the possibilities of linear narration within the conceptual borders.