Human Condition August 29 - September 27, 2008
Opening Reception Friday August 29th 7 PM- 10 PM
Leah Oates, "Signal Hill"
Transitory Space series
Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in flux...and what belongs to the soul is dream and vapor....
Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images.
T.S. Elliot, The Wasteland
The work I create first originates as a response to ignored or lost space that is in a continual state of change. I believe that in everyone there is a sense of flux and a familiarity with this type of space physically and emotionally. The work from this series was shot in Illinois, Finland and Newfoundland and I will be shooting in Newfoundland and in China in 2008.
These images are not manipulated on the computer but are multiple exposures onto one negative at a specific location and in this way conceptually capture the idea of flux within a moment and location which has actually transpired.
Transitory spaces have a messy human energy which is always in the present yet constantly changing. In such sites time passing is at its most beautiful as individuals try to make a fragile mark on their surrounding. I find them endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty, fragility and human striving. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of human existence in a constant state of change.
