At This Time is the title given to both the body of work and the written component of this research project. The body of work, which consists of three series – photographs, drawings and videos - explores ideas of familiarity, temporality and visual perception within the context of the everyday. Of particular interest are the invisible, peripheral and seemingly insignificant details of the environments we negotiate on a daily basis, yet become almost blind to due to close proximity and familiarity. Details of these ‘lesser landscapes’ are carefully documented in order to reveal something of the nature of visual perception and how we experience the visual world. Whether in the form of drawing, photography or video, the works in At This Time endeavour to shed light on an array of overlooked details from within the realm of the everyday. From the phenomenological displays of light that occur throughout the day within domestic interiors, to the random plots of ground that we traverse each day, At This Time focuses on the details so often relegated to the periphery of normal vision. With its careful and precise documentation of such details, this body of work is a thoughtful and measured reflection on the richly textured patina of our everyday environments. Within the exegesis, the tradition of still life painting provides a conceptual lineage for the work in terms of its focus on the common interiors, objects and activities of everyday life. Realism and illusion are commonly employed devices within works of this genre. The drawings in At This Time employ similar devices in order to articulate aspects of the quotidian. However, where a still life painting points to a collection of objects on a table, a drawing in At This Time looks to the floor beneath to reveal something of the beauty of ordinary things. Works by a variety of contemporary filmmakers, including Tacita Dean, Victor Erice and Andy Warhol, introduce notions of temporality and contemplative time explored within my own work. With their emphasis on long takes and real time footage, the qualities of works by Dean in particular, stand in stark contrast to the majority of the screen-based media of today. One is asked to ‘enter … without hurry, without expectation and to accept, as we do in a dream, a different experience of time, and a different relationship to everyday objects.’ A study of a selection of works by contemporary artists, such as those by Cornelia Parker, Rachel Whiteread and Uta Barth, reveal a common interest in the overlooked and the nature of visual perception. Themes of presence/absence, transformation and familiarity are explored in individual works, all of which share a lack of any clearly defined ‘subject’. Instead the emphasis is on the peripheral. An absence of narrative and a distinct focus on the non-event within these works, as with my own work, suggest a strong desire to make visual the things we cannot see and by doing so, highlight the act of looking itself as a central motivation of the work.
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