Planetshine - Alex Bishop-Thorpe

Opening - 6:00 PM - Wednesday, 5th of November

Artist Talk - 5:30 PM

Running - 5 Nov 2014 - 22 Nov 2014

Planetshine sets out to investigating the horizon, employing photography to first distress and then to destroy it. A Super-8 motion picture camera is modified with a hacksaw and auxiliary circuitry to automate its function and provide radio tracking. Attached to dozens of helium balloons, the camera floats into the sky to document the distortion of the horizon as it ascends from ground level, kilometre by kilometre. The balloons burst due to atmospheric pressure, and the camera plummets to earth to be retrieved.

The focus of my practice for the last few years has been the photograph as a physical object and prop of performance, and to this end my work embraces a range of experimental photographic techniques and materials. In this instance the grainy motion picture format lets me play with the moving image as a physical object as well as a threshold into the unfamiliar. I'm interested in how the photograph distorts and expands our lived experience of the world, both in its making and viewing. My work has increasingly incorporated built apparatus as a way of introducing mechanical automation to the photographic process, drawing attention to the artifice of the medium and the inherent performativity of image making.