Alexander Burton: Closer and Closer
24 July, 2012 - 16 September, 2012
Photography Gallery
Alexander Burton, Slope Point (2008), Chromira digital print
Alexander Burton, We Wanted it to Have That Wow Factor (2006), Chromira digital print
The seven photographic works exhibited in Closer and Closer are an amalgamation of two bodies of Alexander Burton’s work. The single images stem from a set of photographs that present the idea of the everyday as a sort of irrational sequence: they are separate but joined together by the act of viewing. The double images are an extension of this idea achieved by placing images directly together to create one work. In these works, Burton aims to address how a photograph can convey a sort of ‘rolling’ present.
Photography, which so often deals with the past and history, is equally effective at addressing the present. Burton is interested in how media is continually reformatted to intersect with users' lives.
“I wanted to work with images that deliver an approximation of kinds of seeing, a sort of imaged fiction. Image-making and traditional photography are often associated with a kind of factual believability - part of their appeal and historical power. Instead of engaging with images as straight documents, the intention of the exhibition is to leave them more open-ended, and subject to contingencies between one another, hence the singular and double works. I wanted to explore imagery that gives validity to the lie of coherence.”
Born in Auckland, Alexander Burton studied politics as an undergraduate, and art history as a postgraduate at the University of Auckland. He taught himself photography, attending night classes at Elam School of Fine Arts and Auckland University of Technology. His practice is somewhat diaristic: digital images are either planned or serendipitous then later edited into a format or series. This is a slow process, generating between eight and ten images per year that are usable. Burton works as a picture editor and researcher.