Eat Abstractly @ Mary Mary

Mary Mary showcases a breadth of international artists in a photography centred exhibition. Across the 18 works that make up Eat Abstractly is a dispersive approach, which juxtaposes seven very different artists working with photography in their practice.

Along with the more straightforward photographic approaches, there is work that is procedurally more complicated. For example Daniel Gordon, in a kind of photo-cannibalism, photographs scenes made in his studio from magazine photographs and internet images. Often rephotographing his own work, the difference between the representation of 2 and 3 dimensional space is made difficult to distinguish by the incorporation of bold colours and patterns.

Similarly, the work of Hayley Tompkins uses the photograph itself as a material, as she paints on top of stock images of water and a planet from space, then displayed on shiny metal trays. Tompkins’ work punctuates well the show of otherwise pristine photographic prints.

There’s a complicated artificiality to the stagey stiffness in the work of Annette Kelm. Kelm sets up a cliché in 1:1 representations of Paisley bandanas next to wheat stalks. Such a forced linguistic segue so obviously present in the image makes for a strained absence of the visual ambiguity that’s in, for example, the coolly fantastic lyricism of Margarete Jakshik. With Jakshik, a certain form, like the curve of a plush headboard, or the pattern of a floral curtain can be charged with intrigue or significance, becoming something like floating or dislocated elements of a narrative. Yet, the intrigue in Jakshik’s work comes from its being just off-kilter in delicately non-naturalistic compositions.

Each set of works is an astringent expression of a specific idea of what makes for worthy photography. Ultimately, Eat Abstractly showcases a potential for the infinite and rich problematisation of photography as a medium. [Adam Benmakhlouf]