Blue Print, 2016
Articulate Project Space with Virginia Hilyard - Blue Print/Picture Start- curated by Helen Grace.
Pedley’s ‘Blueprint’ evokes not only a history of the photographic image, but also a history of technical drawing, in the projective sketches of architects’ and surveyors’ plan- making. The blue intensity of the cyanotype has its origins in the long development of colour and in this case, the 1704 appearance of Prussian Blue – the first modern synthetically- produced colour, arriving as an accident of experiment. Wait a few years and along comes photography and the cyanotype, developed in Sir John Herschel’s chemical experiments and appearing for the first time in 1842 in Anna Atkins’ photograms. The molecular structures, aerial topographies and patterns seen under a microscope that are suggested in this series of Pedley’s cyanotypes directly reference this history, adding to it, painting lines on the surface. The images in their fugitive quality evoke the ephemeral image, suggestive of another Herschel ‘siderotype’: the ‘breath print’, a mixture of ferro-tartaric acid and silver nitrate. After exposure, no image appeared until someone came along and breathed on the print and the moisture of breath oxidized the iron, activating the latent image.
This activation of the image by the body is registered in an ‘animate’ sequence of Pedley’s cyanotypes. The outline of hands and outstretched arms bring the body directly into the work, as shadow of the artist’s presence, moving around the composition, like an action painter. Words etched through a plastic bucket ‘sing’ the words of the Beatles’ Blue Jay Way, with the punched out quality of a pianola roll, adding another media technological layer and aural experience. The ‘bird song’ here was originally inspired by Sunday Reed’s love of The Beatles - part of the Heide ‘soundtrack’.
exert by Helen Grace from catalogue - Blueprint/Picture Start- Virginia Hilyard and Sue Pedley, 2016
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4548/blueprint-picture-start-sue-pedley-and-virginia-/
This activation of the image by the body is registered in an ‘animate’ sequence of Pedley’s cyanotypes. The outline of hands and outstretched arms bring the body directly into the work, as shadow of the artist’s presence, moving around the composition, like an action painter. Words etched through a plastic bucket ‘sing’ the words of the Beatles’ Blue Jay Way, with the punched out quality of a pianola roll, adding another media technological layer and aural experience. The ‘bird song’ here was originally inspired by Sunday Reed’s love of The Beatles - part of the Heide ‘soundtrack’.
exert by Helen Grace from catalogue - Blueprint/Picture Start- Virginia Hilyard and Sue Pedley, 2016
https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4548/blueprint-picture-start-sue-pedley-and-virginia-/
