MAX PACKMAN–WALDER
Compost Writing
KELDER commissioned Max Packman–Walder to respond to Emer O’Brien’s project, Matter of Islington.
Compost Writing
Compost Writing
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Emer O’Brien charts fragments of a much wider world in her analogue photographs. The absence of human presence does not go unnoticed; rather, her assiduous technique appears both appropriate and highly expressive. The images suggest a nexus where people once gathered and silently embody a language we can sense but no longer fully comprehend. Her photographs seem to lead a life of their own, exuding a tactile and sculptural sense of space that reflects the passage of time. She acknowledges a Fauvist tendency towards shape and colour through careful refinement and regrouping. Rich in melancholic existentialism, these places are not only full of ancient life; they are themselves alive. Yet whether this life is the result of an inherent myth or is, like the great cathedrals, the sum of invested belief and centuries of pilgrimage it is hard to say. We often associate the modern in art with a breakdown of traditional decorum in Western culture, but to describe a work of art as modernist is to make a finer distinction: to recognise its appearance as expressive of certain critical commitments and attitudes maintained by the artist herself towards both contemporary culture and the art of the recent past.
Emer O’Brien b. Dublin, Ireland. Lives and works in London and Athens.
Emer O’Brien b. Dublin, Ireland. Lives and works in London and Athens.