Inarticulate Landscapes

About

The thread that runs through Bénédicte Emsens, Kate Boucher and Kate Fahey is the essence of the film still. To see these artworks, one senses there is more to the story - the frame just before or just after may illuminate but we have this frame and the still of this landscape remains mysterious. Each of the artist utilise photography or film to create their work and this reinterpretation of another medium, a quick capture converted into alternative materials and establishing a new reality that lies, or perhaps produces a new truth.  To intentionally mislead, to cultivate confusion with attractive images that upon scrutiny belie the beauty.  Each artist has their chosen material that aids to the obfuscation. Bénédicte Emsens’ oils are applied in a wide variety of consistencies and the strategic use of liquidity constantly brings the viewer back to reality. As we visually travers her environments we fall upon a patch of undeniable paint that is not a place or a dreamscape at all. Kate Boucher uses the richness of charcoal to demonstrate the sudden capture of scenes familiar but unknown, caught in the headlights a sight so memorable yet elusive in the darkness and we doubt we actually saw that.  Kate Fahey’s material integrity produces works that are precisely crafted, exquisitely delivered and are in and of themselves beautiful. However, the multiple concerns they embody are mediated realities that we and those who publicise them, wish to deny.

The inarticulate landscape is one that somehow cheats the romance, the perfect sunset manifest by the weight of pollution in the air.  These artists know a certain type of truth and that is, that very rarely is something simply what it appears to be, and it is this quality in Emsens, Boucher and Fahey’s works that hold us in the moment as we try to understand but understanding is withheld.