Produced for Cley 18, Cley Contemporary Art‘s annual exhibition, Where the light touches explores place and time through cyanotype photography. Using repurposed and recycled materials, the fabrics permanently holds silhouettes of light, plant-matter and found objects from Gorleston-on-sea, Norfolk. The work looks at place through personal depictions of maps, which are created from memory and observation, with hand-sewn ‘journeys’ using thread
The title Where the light touches and its hand-written repetition throughout the panels references the Cyanotype process, in which a light-sensitive iron salt solution reacts with the sun’s UV light to produce permanent Prussian Blue dye
All artists involved in the Cley 18 show explored a theme set by the curator, Dr Caroline Fisher: The greater the distance the clearer the view – one sees the tiniest of details with the utmost clarity’ is taken from W.G. Sebald’s ‘The Rings of Saturn’ where Sebald talks about the writing of Thomas Browne, the great Norwich physician and writer of the 17th century. It encapsulates the idea that something seen from far away can resolve itself to become clearer than something seen close up or that a long journey can allow us the greatest perspective on a subject. It implies either distance or time between the object and the viewer.
