Kat Mitchell

Series for Portfolio Magazine

statement

This series of constructed realities is strongly influenced by surrealist ideas and aesthetic. The use of the egg forges links between the work and the work of artists such as Dali who used the egg as a recurring symbol of life and potential in his work. The egg is also a symbol of fragility. The work embraces the surrealist notion of playful exploration of ideas, and also the idea of a “juxtaposition of two realities”. The tension between these two realities is the key to the work. Building on Barthes’ notion that the “noeme” of the photograph is that it implies a moment now passed, “this-has-been”, this work creates a tension between two states, “this-has-been” and “this-will-be”. The images show a delicate balance, a relationship between two objects which is fragile and temporary and which will be inevitably disrupted. The viewer is encouraged to consider the moment after the photograph was taken, highlighting the photographs’ noeme, to capture the decisive moment and shift it, through implication, into the past. The use of thread and wire is intentionally loose and messy to highlight the temporary nature of these creations and the proximity of their destruction.