What Came to Light at Blast Hole Pond River, Newfoundland 2015– (ongoing)

medium of each diptych: colour photograph and text printed with Epson UltraChrome pigment inks.
dimensions: each 23+1316 inches high x 66 inches wide
(59 x 168 cm)

works from the series are in the following collections: Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Provincial Art Bank; National Gallery of Canada.

This series is about movement – the movement of wildlife at ground level and of celestial bodies overhead. Heaven and Earth, if you like. The events juxtaposed in each pair are just two of the countless natural phenomena – perceptible and imperceptible – that occurred at the same time.

The series is also about the ways we do and do not take photographs and the possibilities for artistic agency when I deliberately relinquish being the photographer and leave it to a trail camera. I installed it at the edge of Blast Hole Pond River where it was triggered by the movement of wildlife. I value the unpredictable, serendipitous, unintentional, and off-centeredness of these photographs, while recognizing that wildlife move with intention and the celestial events in our galaxy happen with precise predictability.

I'm interested in how we regard such photographs, which ask questions about the ways that photographs are composed and about our expectations of the pictured world.

Marlene Creates, 2016