Page 141 - ArtUnlimited

As viewers we are asked to consider the nature of the dissemination of the field of vision. Here the paintings become like camouflage or a mirage
information in a supersaturated media environment, which promotes a shimmering between figuration and the pattern. As well, the paintings
sense of mass anesthesia and ennui. grotesque spectacle and voyeurism become progressively more painterly and expressive, partly in response to
is commonplace. war has become a rather ordinary nightmare. It is the difficult content of the work. In historical forms of Islamic art the use
ever easier to turn away and not to ask questions. By re-activating the of pattern is viewed as a technique to symbolically represent the divine
photographic image with the human hand, Ashburn returns particular order of god’s creation as well as to suggest the infinity and pleasures of
power and force to the events that have been depicted, fixed and infinitely paradise to come. Rich blues suggest water and sky, red suggest blood
dislocated by the vast streams of ‘wall to wall”, “round the clock” media. and the earth. In Ashburn’s works while there is the hint of this divine and
In this exhibition we become witnesses once again. where possible, constantly beautiful garden, there are patterns of destruction and patterns
Ashburn includes the name of the photographer, the location and names of horror. Order, disorder and collapse are essential motifs in this exhibition.
of the participants /combatants /victims. These works are not about the
heroics of war, not about aggrandizement. As the artist states “everyone In “Explosive Forces: Fear and Destruction in Conflict” Liz Ashburn
is tainted by war”. continues her explorations of the dynamics of power with images form
and text. Here she combines two seemingly disparate visual traditions to
In the some works there is a distinct separation between the create a sense of quiet advocacy. Indeed this exhibition can be regarded
photographically derived image and the frames of complex arabesques as a homeopathic exercise - that by engaging with a little of the poison
and interlaced stylized flowers and tendrils. In other paintings, the framing we can possibly negotiate a cure.
device slowly disintegrates and melds together to deliberately destabilize Craig Judd, June 2010

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