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RESEARCH POINT: SOPHY RICKETT “Objects in the Field”
Sophy Rickett was born in London, England on 22 September 1970 and is a visual artist, working in London in photography, video and sound.
However, that short bio doesn’t do justice to Sophy’s story as an artist. She was diagnosed as needing eyeglasses to see clearly beyond the middle distance when she was a young child, she has an artist go on to be able to see the moon and stars clearly. While working as an Associate Artist at the Institute of Astronomy, at Cambridge University, she was inspired by some old negatives of the night sky and met the astronomer responsible, Dr. Roderick Willstrop, retired fellow of the IoA. Through making prints from the old negatives that maximise the artistic and tonal qualities, not the scientific nature of the images, and many meetings with Willstrop she triggered childhood memories that connected her need glasses, and her ability to see the stars.
This good example of ‘Relay’ where text and pictures combine to create a fuller picture yet still allow some degree of ambiguity and interpretation as what is happening outside the pictures is just as important to the overall narrative than the images themselves.
However, where do I stand on the images, this where I have issues because these are photographs, and the Rickett is the photographer, however, she isn’t she is the editor and the printer. I know postmodernism encourages the artist to be different and we are in Andy Warhol’esque situation admiring the perfect reproduction of what wasn’t the artist original work but it was the artist original idea to present it as art.
Perhaps this is more telling of me, that I have a limited imagination.
References
En.wikipedia.org. (n.d.). Sophy Rickett. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophy_Rickett [Accessed 22 Jul. 2018].
The Photographers’ Gallery. (2014). Sophy Rickett – Objects in the Field. [online] Available at: https://thephotographersgalleryblog.org.uk/2014/03/19/sophy-rickett-objects-in-the-field/ [Accessed 22 Jul. 2018].