Artist Talk - Tracy Hill
Tracy Hill
Material Investigation and Research-led Practice
9.11.17
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| Tracy Hill, Harmonious Constituents; 2016 - Image courtesy of the artist. |
Visiting Artist Tracy Hill lead us through her multidisciplinary practice that combines Visual Arts and Geoscience. She explores how physical and cultural histories influence the landscape. [1]
It was interesting to think about how her work
functions with an audience- how he translates Geographical data into a visual
arts piece for a visual arts audience. Hill mentioned a dynamic relationship
between digital technologies and print. Her ephemeral prints generated from
translating data from laser scanners, reflect a relationship between artist and
the natural landscape.
Her work has a poeticism to it, which can
be found in her investigations into how people navigated the country when
technology wasn’t a commodity. She mentioned found journal entries from people
who traced the details of a natural location in order for people to find it
again. A multisensory experience is created; connected to memory and the
intimate understanding of place.
Hill frequently used words such as faith
and truth – the spiritual connotations of her personal connection to the places
becomes evident in the way she speaks about gathering her materials from the
landscape. Her resulting images have a holy quality to them. Reminiscent of
Baroque Christian paintings (fig.1), the divine glow in the distance offers access
to the sanctified horizon; the spiritual qualities of her approach appear evident
in the way she thinks about reconnecting to the landscape. She referenced
Daniel Defoe, a prolific novelist generating fiction of characters grand adventures.
Within this there is a point to be made of navigating through digital
technology in a similar way to that of Robinson
Crusoe or like the geographical mappers of the pre-technology age.
Hill mentioned the term Liminality (occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.)
Here she references the humanity involved in her process of gathering material
to generate her images. We have an intimate relationship with digital
technology in the 21st century, yet still feel a sense of awe and
emotion attached to particular places. The environment is the threshold, which
has the power to draw us back to a raw connection to the landscape. Hill
approaches both elements to our human nature through her prints. They, satisfy
our desire to be a part of the ever-growing digital landscape yet allow us to
feel something for the real environment where the images are extracted.
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Fig. 1 - Claude Gellée - Landscape with Narcissus
and Echo - 1644
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