Alex Kershaw
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31 October - 25 November 2006
Alex Kershaw
Petalody
Press Release
Catalogue Essay
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In Alex Kershaw’s latest body of work, Petalody, the everyday contents of house and garden become narrative props in photographs that have an enigmatic charm. Petalody – the metamorphosis of various floral organs, for example stamens into petals – here becomes a metaphor for the transitions and evolutions that define a human life and passages between family. The shifts and turns, moments of flux and subsequent resolutions, resistance and inevitable change.
The result of a year-long sequence of visits to his grandmother’s home, the photographs are records of a dialogue between family, across generations; a document of, and homage to, the idiosyncrasies of a particular place and person. Inspired by his grandmother’s enduring engagement with ikebana, the ancient Japanese art of arranging flowers, Kershaw has constructed his own consciously flawed arrangements in which his grandmother, her belongings, and her house and garden feature as points of reference for quiet ruminations. The intriguing scenes that ensue are each fragments of these reflective activities, in which various features of ikebana become avenues for considering broader facets of the human condition.
At the core of ikebana is the concept of breaking down polarities to create equilibrium. Reconciling notions of inside and outside – both architectural and psychological – is key to this. Kershaw’s images illuminate such concerns in terms of subject but also process, mobilising ikebana and photography as mechanisms for generating social spaces of exchange and intimacy.
For Kershaw’s grandmother, ikebana began as an activity for filling gaps in relationships, a purposeful distraction. Likewise, Petalody is a project grounded in the pleasurable passing of time rather than tangible outcomes; a temporal unfolding of gestures and effects, conversations, and intersections between people and objects that transpire as fleeting moments of curious delight.
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