jeremy blincoe

the myth of progress

15 july - 20 august 2016

• ashley crawford, the myth of progress essay, 2016
• current cv

• www.jeremyblincoe.com

Born in New Zealand [in 1981] and based in Melbourne, Blincoe studied photography at Massey University in Wellington and went on to hone his craft via advertising photography.

The patina of advertising aesthetics remains; he is a bravura technician and perfectionist when it comes to composition, but that is where the influence comes to an end: In fact Blincoe's interests are the antithesis of those of advertising. Contemplating his subjects, his lighting and his colouration, one becomes immersed in a distinctive world-view saturated with that most dangerous of terms; "spirituality."

His works are inevitably set at dusk, that non-time between light and dark, the interzone between wakefulness and slumber where the imagination tends to wander, creating chimera from shadows. Set in the Victorian wilderness, he drapes his actors in garb that he himself designs, creating a sense of arcane ritual that give one pause. However the real 'stars' of these fabulous tableaux are in fact the settings: Regardless of the activities undertaken, with their hints of religious ritual, it is nature itself that dominates, almost belittling the human participants. The result is a sense of the surreal... As he himself acknowledges in an artists' statement, his works are "set in or against a variety of strange and mysterious natural settings that I either shoot on-location or edit in during post-production. While adding dramatic visual impact, they also function as signifiers of the beauty and/or degradation and destruction our natural environment suffers through human intervention and natural disaster."

Blincoe titled this series The Myth of Progress. It is unfortunately an apt title, for the word 'progress' suggests improvements or developments, a 'myth' indeed when one begins to take for granted a world in which the very climate seems hell bent on global devastation due to human indifference to the world in which it lives.

As Freud noted in Civilization and Its Discontents, the "fateful question" for Humanity is whether the instinct for aggression and self-destruction" will dominate, noting that: "Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent... [that] they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man." Freud hailed this as the cause of a general "mood of anxiety," and there is indeed a degree of anxiety in Blincoe's work, albeit expressed with poetic beauty.

- Ashley Crawford 2016
(essay extracts)

 

*please note prices are for framed prints

 

 

detachment edition 1/10 inkjet print on canson platine fibre rag 100 x 151cm 2016 $3,850
tropic of chaos edition 1/10 inkjet print on canson platine fibre rag 100 x 112cm 2016 $3,850	still i hear the word progress edition 1/10 inkjet print on canson platine fibre rag 100 x 116cm 2016 $3,850
clothed in myth edition 1/10 inkjet print on canson platine fibre rag 100 x 150cm 2016 $3,850
spirit line edition 1/10 inkjet print on canson platine fibre rag 100 x 148cm 2016 $3,850	necessary evil edition 1/10 inkjet print on canson platine fibre rag 100 x 112cm 2016 $3,850 sold