I
chose industrial heritage as the theme for my final major
project. This promoted me to travel, with a camera, to various
sites in London which were heavily industrialised during
the 19th century. I visited many areas such as King’s
Cross, Paddington and North Greenwich where I photographed
stations and gas containers. Given the confines of my project,
I narrowed my subject matter to gas containers, in King's
Cross and North Greenwich. I wanted to portray these old
decrepit industrial structures in a light that showed off
their aesthetic value.
A
variety of processes were used in order to create this piece.
When developing my photographs in the dark room, I played
around with double and triple exposures which distorted
the imagery, creating a network of
overlapping lines. Using photographic screen printing I
layered different images of the gas containers using monochrome
shades of acrylic onto canvas.
The image began to look even more distorted and rich in
structure. I wanted to ‘age’ my images as a
reflection of the state of decrepitude of my subject
matter. Painting latex and sand (both materials used in
industrial processes) onto parts of the canvas helped to
re-create this worn environment. I re-printed over parts
of the latex. Mixing sand into acrylic and ripping away
parts of the latex made the paint crack and reveal the image
beneath, thus adding to the semblance of rust and decay.
White washing with emulsion and acrylic pushed parts of
the image back adding further to a ghostly atmosphere.
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