Echoes of Process | Joachim Froese
September 15 - 3 October, 2021
Jan Manton Gallery is pleased to present Joachim Froese’s exhibition Echoes of Process on show from 15 September - 3 October 2021.
Echoes of Process will present a variety of salt prints as a part of Froese’s Entangled series as well as two large scale works (both consisting of 56 individual prints) from his Wollemi Giants series; a green tea toned cyanotype print and a waxed inkjet printed paper negative. Through using historical and contemporary processes, Froese illustrates the oscillation between science and art and our own rational and emotional ambiguous relationship with the non-human world.
Froese states, ‘With Echoes of Process, I am returning to analogue black/white photography but this time it means a completely new mode of working as most of the beautiful black/white papers and developers I used before 2000 aren’t around anymore – at least not in Australia. I now make everything myself from scratch and I am returning right to the beginnings of photography. Salt prints and cyanotypes are handmade: a sheet of paper is coated with one or more chemical solutions which I mix up to create a light sensitive emulsion. My darkroom has transformed into a small chemistry lab.’
Catalogue Essay Writer Adam Monohon writes ‘Froese’s extensive investigations into process (whether photographic, botanic, or climatic) collapses rigid distinctions (between historic and contemporary, analogue and digital, art and science) and invites sustained engagement and careful contemplation on behalf of the viewer. These works act as a call to attention, as well, subtle reminders of the complexity and entanglement of an increasingly fragile world.’
