Uncontrolled Abstraction: The Elements

SaltSpace invites you to the opening night of Uncontrolled Abstraction: The Elements by Jeff Edwards on Thursday 17th February 5 - 8pm at SaltSpace gallery! The show will also run for one week open until 22nd February, Monday - Friday, 11 - 5pm and Saturday - Sunday, 12 - 5pm.

Jeff Edwards is an American born artist photographer based in Glasgow, Scotland. Graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011, he has shown work throughout the United Kingdom and the United States. Influenced by the work of Ralph Steadman, Sallie Mann and Francis Bacon to name a few, Edwards works with archaic, traditional and alternative practices. Edwards explores techniques which are no longer in regular practice or are not associated with photography, and work in a tactile, intuitive manner to push the boundaries of both analogue and digital practices.

Jeff’s exhibition stems from an on-going experimental process, which involves the creation of alternative landscapes by exposing large format film negatives to natural elements, analogous to the classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, building blocks of philosophical theories around the globe.

The photography within the show will depict created landscapes in some and cosmic beginnings and endings in others. They will lure the viewer in to see a multitude of layers, depth and emotion within a still life, which has originally been captured within the blink of an eye. The show will encompass the viewer and allow them to stand back and view the image as a vast landscape or up close to see the small details a grain of sand can create with a flash of fire.

‘ Through careful research I have developed an approach to which I refer to as Uncontrolled Abstraction. While certain aspects are under my command, the results are left to the mercy of the environments they are placed within or the forces they are subjected to. Fire, ice, smoke and micro explosions all bring an unpredictable nature particularly when combined with the film, which has its own history and reacts accordingly.
I see this experimental and unpredictable aspect of the project as being grounded in the history of analogue photography while also looking forward through the prism of creation, of building something new by combining these natural ingredients.

For over 10 years now I have been working with photography in a physical and tactile way. I longed for a way to bring the raw power and emotion such artists created with paint and ink into the realm of photography. Spending years experimenting, dissecting, pushing and pulling my negatives and prints as far as I possibly could I always found I could do more and go further. The largest obstacle was how to create an image where the physicality was happening with the image and not simply to it. With this work I have succeeded in creating images with effect, purpose and concept as one. '