This Was Now Here is a group show of three artists whose work sits within the hybrid medium specificity of the ‘still-motion’, an in-between media at the intersection of photography and the cinematic.
Susan Sontag calls the photograph an object of contemplation as it allows the spectator an unlimited time to gaze (a privileged moment). She further suggests that photographs might be ‘more memorable than moving images, because they are a slice of time, not a flow.’ What happens, then, when still photographs are joined together to create a flowing image – a still motion, operating somewhere in between the past (photography) and present (the moving image)? By disruption or synchronisation, the morphological process of montage/editing communicates variable positions for the image to change and be experienced—both in space and time. Yvette Hamilton, Melissa Howe and Ellen Dahl all use time as a mode for generating new narrative opportunities to reflect back upon contemporary culture, identity and belonging.