Photography, Robert Gillespie
Statement:
These images are from the abstract conceptual photography series, TYPE 1A.
The series investigates the relationship between artists and critics through the metaphor of the Type 1a supernova where two different types of star orbit one another, one drawing mass from the other until it explodes and outshines the other.
Is the relationship symbiotic, where it is of benefit to both parties or is it co-dependent, where each needs the other for their own purposes, but resents them for it? There are implications for the power dynamics in wider human relationships.
The series is my response to the spat between conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth and art critic Benjamin Buchloh in 1990/91.
Inspired by a curiosity of astronomy and cosmology, combined with an appreciation of traditional, pre-digital era special visual effects, the images, although digital, are created entirely in camera with no post processing. The series is intended to evoke the aesthetic of NASA's astronomical images.
Born in 1966, Robert Gillespie was small, skinny, geeky, and looking more like a girl than a boy, his sexuality was always questioned. In Derry during 'the Troubles' that was nigh on life threatening. It was an impoverished, brutalized, and traumatized society and he was brutalized and traumatized by that society. He stood out in all the wrong ways. He was afraid. All the time. He was, in many ways, a pariah, and that caused him to develop a very ambivalent, distorted view of humanity. But he could draw. Recently diagnosed with cPTSD, Gillespie's background and experiences of coming from Northern Ireland permeate all his work. Not always in ways that are initially obvious. Now living in London, Gillespie is currently working on multiple sound art and conceptual photography series which should be published and exhibited over the coming year.
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