Simon Devitt
Nature is a Maybe
1- 5 June 2010
Preview: Tuesday 1 June, 5 - 7 pm
In Nature is a Maybe emerging photographer Simon Devitt brings together a collection of photographs that detail the spaces we inhabit.
While working largely within the realm of traditional architectural photography, Devitt's images exploit the physical features of his subjects in often unpredictable ways. By highlighting their formal elements he creates elegant compositions that can seem at odds with the true function of the space portrayed.
In Drop, for example, dramatic lighting accentuates the shadows of folded fabric resulting in an effect not unlike a minimalist painting. Similarly, in I'm Not at the Bottom, the reduced colour palette and subtle tonal variations imbue the depicted stairwell with a warm, almost romantic quality, drawing our attention away from the ordinariness of the stairs themselves towards the angles and rhythms that they create.
Other works move beyond an exploration of form, line and light to offer more direct interpretations of living spaces and environments. In some, Devitt places prosaic locations and objects alongside the glamorous interiors of high end living environments, a juxtaposition that both connects and disconnects the subjects. In others, Devitt delights in the imperfections of daily life. With items such as rubbish bins and scuffed walls, dated bathtubs and empty rooms, he reinforces our awareness that the objects we are seeing are of the utmost ordinariness. Yet it is just this banality that allows us to move beyond recognition of the facts of the composition to an almost illogical emotive response, where the most familiar of objects and surroundings seem somehow mysterious, intriguing or forbidding.
The efficacy of Devitt's series I See You There, from which Nature is a Maybe is drawn, is the way in which even the most recognisable can cause us to look twice, and the smallest of details are capable of conveying the largest of ideas.
Nature is a Maybe is the second of three week-long exhibitions in 3 x 1 Photography Series.
Read an interview with Simon Devitt on Nature is a Maybe here on Habitus Living online.
