Lagoon

It was following a trip to a family friend’s house in Crail, Fife, that I first really engaged with the technique of double exposure photography. Very shortly after my return home to Glasgow, the country was placed into it’s first lockdown and in the wake of this, much of my work as a graphic designer was put on hold. In need of a creative outlet to occupy my mind and time, I began making my own double exposures, which eventually gave rise to “Lagoon”, my source of solace during lockdown, and now, exhibition.

That initial, very late night attempt at creating my first double exposure still sits clearly in my mind and the final piece remains a favourite in the collection. Working with scanned digital copies of film photographs I had taken - one a view from my flat and the second taken in the centre of Frankfurt, Germany - the shots were layered over each other using Photoshop. The surreal outcome of marrying two photographs together particularly struck a chord at this time of heavy restrictions on our usual freedoms. The original, separate compositions come together to create a contradictory place which simultaneously does and does not exist; which we can and cannot explore. Reminiscent, perhaps, of the notion that the places and people we see in dreams are only the product of real experiences, woven together by our minds to design a new environment. From both the confinement to, and comfort of home, digging out photographs taken on my Olympus analogue camera became a means by which I could discover and create new spaces and places whilst the outside world was off limits.

During periods where restrictions eased, I was able to take new photographs allowing for more material to continue creating these artworks.

The exhibition, “Lagoon”, takes its name from the nickname I gave to my living room during lockdown. Spending day after day in the same space, to work, rest and eat, I tried to transform the space into the most comfy and cosy setting, to create a small, dreamy haven and refuge from the tumultuous dystopia of living through a pandemic.

As a collection these works subscribe to the surrealist genre, creating dreamlike - and in some cases, nightmarish - scapes. Broadly speaking, the themes in this body of work are urban and liminal space, examining the seeming antagonism in the flourishing of artistic freedom and escapism in a time of constraint and limitation.