Engaging with objects and materialities and situated at the interstices of photography and sculpture, Julie’s work addresses and questions human existence, exploring notions of fragility, transience, imperfection and destruction. Process and ‘making’ are embedded in her practice and she seeks to re-contextualise photographic language speculating upon ways in which it may encourage an engagement with the physical experience of artworks and attend to the process of making and material properties of photographs in time and space.
Pietra Paesina is inspired by a rare and singular limestone, also known as ruin marble, that came into being millions of years ago, its layered strata bearing traces of its own formation. A process of deconstruction and subsequent re-imagining as objects positioned in space has culminated in an installation that reflects upon our individual, transient place in earth’s history whilst confronting the impact of humankind. Folds and fractures allude not only to notions of our own insignificance but also to change, disruption and collapse. The photographic image operates as fragment and illusion, asserting its presence not only as a reminder of time past, of what has been lost, but also as a portal into an imperfect, perhaps ruinous, future. Juxtapositions of the singular and the repetitive and of the solid and the ephemeral offer a meditation upon the ever changeable, contingent nature of existence.
