Alchemy II – 65x84cm

Photography on Alupanel
Timber framed
84x64cm

limited editon photography

A sequence of 10 photographic prints of the face, ( the artist’s Daughter, the subject for all exhibiting works) each with bold shifts in colour and showing exquisite detail in the variation in line, shape and layering. Altered, however, are their colour palette, contrast, brightness and tone, so that every individual image bestows a radically different impression.

They’re thrillingly reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s 1967 Marilyn Monroe Portfolio, but without sacrificing anything of Payes’s elemental aesthetic. Superimposing photography of a glacia taken 10 years prior – Floe over the opaque, angular features of the digital avatar, their qualities combine to create a perceptible landscape. The electric array of colour employed – fiery red magmas, mud-rust browns, and radioactive yellows and greens; result in palpably dystopian visions of Earth as prophesied by an omnipotent divinity.
The striking images are of an obviously human form but the decision to print them on metallic paper and to use such a kaleidoscope of iridescent colours suggests something different. If not quite an artificial life form, then perhaps a human who is altered by the changes in their environment.