Exhibition: 16 Oct – 27 Nov

Private View: Fri 15 Oct, 7 – 10pm

 

Hotshoe Gallery is pleased to present Noemie Goudal’s Les Amants, a new series of photographs presented in her first solo show to date.

“The two dimensionality of the image and the fixing of its boundaries produces another space, fictitious in nature.” 1

Within these images, every prop and backdrop has been meticulously installed and fed-through Goudal’s scrutinising lens; a viewing position that sees the world full of the strangest cause-and-effect relationships between subjects, spaces and meandering tales. These compositions juxtapose layers and narratives, the difference between what is real and what is not is often indistinguishable.

These rich portrayals of part-real, part-artificial scenes, containing synthetic materials that parody those of nature, are all arranged together into a consistent narrative of sorts. The works title, The Lovers, seeks to metaphorise the pairing of a couple in love. These two anonymous entities never actually appear in the photographs, and instead find their presence elsewhere: manifested by the falling of water, the warm glow of decaying timber or the antique beauty of an empty chair.

There is a quiet commentary present in this work that seeks to reflect upon the relationship between mankind and the natural world. Man’s destructive influence on nature is prevalent – albeit reclusively – in these photographs. On the surface of these images is an erudite beauty, an almost fairytale-like portrayal of a world with its boundaries between fiction and reality blurred. Man and nature become intertwined in this disordered relationship; a relationship based on declining love. They push and pull against one another; arguing, fighting and inevitably carving out a path to their own destruction. By using synthetic materials to mimic water, or a tree, Goudal makes important gestures towards our disregard for the integrity and materiality of the natural world. The Lovers here become a metaphor for a much wider and problematic phenomenon.

This exhibition also includes a single collaborative piece entitled ‘Bassin’ by Noemie Goudal and Bethan Lloyd Worthington.

Exhibition curated by Daniel Campbell Blight.

1 Chevrier, Jean-Francois, ‘The Tableau and the Document of Experience’, Essay in Weski Thomas, Click Double Click, The Documentary Factor, Munich, Verlag des Buchlandlung Walther Konig, 2006.