Latent Image
wood, lead, ink, wax, salt, dirt
archived
10 Jun
–
9 Jul
2016
Caitlin Devoy
Latent Image* responds both to the material qualities of the gallery space and its past incarnation as a photographic studio. Architectural details are miniaturized, inverted, burnt back. The familiar becomes unfamiliar, like the black sky in a photographic negative.
Ralph Rugoff uses the term psychobuilding to refer to works which engage us in the “psychological dimensions of built spaces, as well as their formal and material aspects...Here we find architecture not in its functional guise but as a site of desire, memory and doubt.”[1] Latent Image sits between peripheral vision and concentrated gaze. A carbonized version of the gallery; not a double and yet not entirely separate.
Semantic agnosia or 'object blindness' refers to the need to use non-visual sensory systems to recognise an object. This sense of estrangement from the semantics of the gallery space allows shifting perceptual responses.
*A latent image is an image on a photosensitive film that has not yet been made visible by developing.
Exhibition Essay
Latent Room: A photographer’s response
By Caroline McQuarrie
Read Online
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
Caitlin Devoy, Latent Image, 2016. Image courtesy of Shaun Matthews.
[1] Rugoff, Ralph(2008) Psycho Buildings: Artists take on Architecture, p.17-19. London, Hayward Publishing.
Special thanks to Massey University and Tim Larkin, for generously providing workshop space and technical assistance.