Who?Clare Strand is a Brighton-based photographer and artist. She is invested in dissecting the complexity of everyday objects and circumstances, creating weird, unsettling machines that work with her photographs to unravel the unsolvability and the mysticism of situations. From ghostly portraits of floating people to photographs of re-enacted crime scenes, Strand’s projects aim to explore the origins, uses and limitations of photography.
What? Once again considering the possibilities and boundaries of the medium, Strand’s new show, Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time, is built around the concepts of image degradation and visual perception. In The Happenstance Generator, the largest of the machines on display and the main focus of the show, archive photographs are drifted about by concealed fans while being lit up intermittently, mirroring how data and images gain and lose significance in our everyday lives. A second machine, The Entropy Pendulum, addresses the notion of image deconstruction through a process of abrasion under the weight of a swing. The theme of erosion stretches from print to film in Material, a video installation showing grains of dust going in and out of sight, as the corrosive material glides through a channel of sunlight.
Why? Clare Strand’s work is conceptualised, researched and brought to life through an extraordinary and personal photographic sensibility. Employing a distinctive method in each of her projects, Strand’s art approaches the ordinary in ways that unfold its unknowability and constraints. A mixed-medium exhibition, Getting Better and Worse at the Same Time exploits the potential of dynamic machines, film and photography through surprising and unconventional means.
