Lily Hibberd
dal 9/1/2013 al 1/3/2013
Segnalato da
9/1/2013
Lily Hibberd
De Roussan gallery, Paris
Les Aimants. The artist presents 3 series of 21 pieces each and an installation. The first series shows the original photographs in a sequence of 21 engravings on magnetic stones. The second shows the same photographs taken recently on her body.
'Les Aimants' retraces the evolution and emergence of the sense of infant desire.
The photographs used as the basis for the various series are portraits of the
artist between the ages of two and thirteen, that evoke memories of her sexual
awakening.
For her second solo exhibition at the Galerie de Roussan, Lily Hibberd presents
three series of 21 pieces each and an installation. The first series shows the
original photographs in a sequence of 21 engravings on magnetic stones. The
second shows the same photographs taken recently on her body. The images
from this «mise en abyme» she has created are reproduced on tracing paper
alongside documentation of the reverse side of each of the original photographic
prints. Shown in the basement, these works are titled «laminated memories».
Finally, an installation demonstrates of the latent forces of magnetism.
In realising these different pieces, Lily Hibberd is seeking her own
metaphorical history, because in the photographs there exists the material trace of her
memories, and also of human desire and force. It is not only electromagnetism
and photography that we could associate in this way, but the mediating substance
of desire in its layered configuration, including memory, love, loss, language,
representation and subjectivity.
Whether it is the reverse of the images (adhesive residues, dates, her mother’s
inscriptions...), the two opposite poles (positive–negative) of the magnets, or the
relationship between the photographer and model, these different pieces reveal
the duality of the time and desire.
In this work, she tries to locate her «inner self» in the birth of her own desire.
Parallel to this theoretical introspection, she wants to experiment with this «pre-
consciousness» of her sexuality, in reproducing these photographs on magnetic
stones, which are themselves related to the basis of the reproduction process in
photography.
In «Burning With Desire The Conception of Photography» *, the academic Geoffrey
Batchen, in the chapter «Electromagnets», links the magnet with its invention
and terminology like ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, stating that «the metaphor of
the electromagnet played a crucial role in both the development of a romantic
worldview and the conception of photography».
Roland Barthes similarly declares: «it is not what we see... photography creates
a mutual image, a laminated object... whose two leaves cannot be separated
without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and why not:
Good and Evil, desire and its object...»**
By staging these different techniques, Lily Hibberd primarily seeks to examine
memory, technique and passion. Exploring the relationship between the past
and still images, the artist has realised the timelessness and infinity of her own
desire.
«The only consolation I can find, is that we share an intolerable reality in
the affirmation of our insanity, the madness the logic of the framing of the
camera. When I look back at this photographic apparatus on my bed, I see my
misrecognition. I have put the photographing machine in place, mistaking its
miraculous materialisation for someone who might love me. And I see in the
end that my laminated memory does not look like the young girl, for it is the
photograph of a child I have never known.» (Lily Hibberd)
* Geoffrey Batchen, Burning With Desire: The Conception of Photography. MIT Press, 1997: 152.
** Roland Barthes, La Chambre Claire : Note sur la photographie, Cahiers du cinéma/Gallimard/ Seuil,1980
Recognised among the leaders of her generation in Australia, Lily Hibberd is a
conceptual and interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her practice turns on the question of time, memory and desire, all in a contemporary approach.
Lily Hibberd has exhibited in many of the most prestigious institutions in Australia, London, Ulaanbaatur, New York, Saint Petersburg and Basel.
Lily Hibberd is a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Doctor of Philosophy in Contemporary Art. This is her second exhibition at the Galerie de Roussan.
Opening 01/10/2013
Galerie de Roussan
10 rue Jouye-Rouve 75020 Paris
Opening from Thuesday to saturday from 2am-7pm
and by appointement