ARTISTS
Stephen Inggs: Legacy
Stephen Inggs is a photographer who invokes rather than re-presents objects in his images. He translates what is often overlooked in the landscape or home into complex symbolic catalysts of memory. There is a sensual stillness in his images full of the emotion attached to the commonplace things of a South African history and place. Photographing an old jug, a bucket of proteas, hand tools, a pile of books or a bundle of fence wire, he isolates the ordinary and elevates it beyond its mundane status in large-scale prints.
In an age of mass-produced web and print based imagery, Inggs鈥� photographs are strikingly original. These large-scale images are hand-coated with silver gelatin emulsion, embueing them with a distinct tactile and painterly quality that foregrounds Inggs鈥� interest in image making rather than image capturing. For Inggs the act of making is unavoidably an object-orientated labour, one that culminates in the distinctive material presence of his photographs.
In Legacy, Inggs is curating a museum of memory where objects suggest a narrative resonating beyond the image and landscapes delve into our complex imaginary and historical relationships with land and space. His photographic process strips the object of its original functionality and context. Once these corellations are broken, the image is successfully transformed into a symbol of memory, loss and beauty. Each image implies a particular relation to land, history, and a form of life and examines the universal concern of the evolving nature of our relationship to our context and to the everyday items around us.
Inggs studied Printmaking at the University of Brighton and the University of Natal. He is currently Associate Professor and Director of Michaelis, University of Cape Town and has exhibited extensively in South Africa and abroad. His artworks are held in private and corporate collections worldwide, namely Iziko South African National Gallery, Durban Art Gallery, University of Cape Town, Rand Merchant Bank, MTN, Sanlam, Arup London, Northwestern University and the Library of Congress in the USA.
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Stephen Inggs is a photographer who invokes rather than re-presents objects in his images. He translates what is often overlooked in the landscape or home into complex symbolic catalysts of memory. There is a sensual stillness in his images full of the emotion attached to the commonplace things of a South African history and place. Photographing an old jug, a bucket of proteas, hand tools, a pile of books or a bundle of fence wire, he isolates the ordinary and elevates it beyond its mundane status in large-scale prints.
In an age of mass-produced web and print based imagery, Inggs鈥� photographs are strikingly original. These large-scale images are hand-coated with silver gelatin emulsion, embueing them with a distinct tactile and painterly quality that foregrounds Inggs鈥� interest in image making rather than image capturing. For Inggs the act of making is unavoidably an object-orientated labour, one that culminates in the distinctive material presence of his photographs.
In Legacy, Inggs is curating a museum of memory where objects suggest a narrative resonating beyond the image and landscapes delve into our complex imaginary and historical relationships with land and space. His photographic process strips the object of its original functionality and context. Once these corellations are broken, the image is successfully transformed into a symbol of memory, loss and beauty. Each image implies a particular relation to land, history, and a form of life and examines the universal concern of the evolving nature of our relationship to our context and to the everyday items around us.
Inggs studied Printmaking at the University of Brighton and the University of Natal. He is currently Associate Professor and Director of Michaelis, University of Cape Town and has exhibited extensively in South Africa and abroad. His artworks are held in private and corporate collections worldwide, namely Iziko South African National Gallery, Durban Art Gallery, University of Cape Town, Rand Merchant Bank, MTN, Sanlam, Arup London, Northwestern University and the Library of Congress in the USA.
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