vivian cooper smith: losing ground
03.03.21-26.03.22
Installation images, Vivian Cooper Smith; Losing Ground . Blockprojects, 2021. Photography: Simon Strong
Vivian and I share an unusually similar background (ask us about it sometime it is scary in the details how similar). We were both raised in families who followed a strong belief system. A system that gave hard edges to understanding life based around and through the idea of death. So, it was probably no surprise that we both ended up working with a medium – photography – that arguably carries with it the parallels to this belief system. To believe in this photographic system though one has to be blind to the ground – to the medium.
The ground of the image, within painting, is understood as that which can’t be seen but forms the base of the image. In photography arguably the medium itself is the equivalent. It is overlooked for its ability to represent. That the medium is transparent though, is a myth, “a bit of bourgeois folklore” that perpetuates the ideology of control/ownership/power. Understanding this, Vivian’s work brings the ground – the medium – to the forefront to allow him to ask questions of hard edges, of certainty. His aporetic methods of working are used to try and find something as much through what-it-is-not as with what-it-is.
Through his work it seems to me that Vivian wants to expose the ground to make our belief unstable. To ask questions for himself and allow us to ask questions too. Vivian upends the representation relationship of figure-ground creating a space of visual unsuredness. In so doing he also upends the myth of the medium as transparent ground. He brings it to the forefront. Refuting the representational understanding of the photograph to the point where his images can only be understood as the medium itself – photography. In this action of upending to expose (bad photography pun intended) that which is most often ignored or overlooked in photographs – the photography – Vivian challenges us to ask “what is a photograph”? To state a belief by allowing us to see the possibility of what it is not. Staking a firm position through instability.
Dr Kiron Robinson
Artist Statement
I travelled a lot as a kid. Many schools, different homes and friends all over. It was a unique upbringing but one that left a legacy. A feeling of ‘groundlessness’. I was always having to reorient myself to changing circumstances, new faces and places. Belonging takes time. When it happened it was by building relationships – softening the boundaries – so I wasn’t so obvious. Sometimes there wasn’t enough time and I remained the stranger.
I now accept this itinerant feeling and try and see it as a positive or generative one. When the measures of your identity are always shifting you have to work a bit harder to establish that core. You learn not to rely on externalities – people, places, things to provide that grounding. In a way, this is also how I approach photography. The photographs I make don’t tell you everything. They don’t tell a story or reveal a secret. When someone looks at an photograph I’ve made they are looking at the world through my eyes. It is a world built on transition and uncertainty where not everything has a place. Rather than something to be avoided though, this uncertainty holds the promise of new ways of seeing, of being.
