IN FOCUS: JOANNE DUGAN

Joanne Dugan's cameraless photographic practice has evolved into a decidedly painterly process with the inclusion of cyanotype into her normally monochrome palette. The artist's exciting new body of work embodied in 'Persistent Awakening' is delightfully unexpected, thoughtful and visually satisfying in its abstracted forms.

Joanne Dugan creates unique works using traditional photographic tools and processes, often without the use of a camera. Multiples are printed, cut, and assembled by hand - the physical print is both the subject and the object in Dugan's work. The artist utilises a slow and methodical approach to rendering a work, a purposeful response to the fast-paced world of digital photography and technological advancement. Dugan brings a meditative practice to the making of her works, where the creation and assembly of the finished pieces involves repetitive movements and intricate hand-cutting techniques.

Joanne Dugan's newest series Persistent Awakening combines the distinctive Prussian blue of the cyanotype process with her regular monochrome palette. Re-interpreting the history and visual possibilities of traditional silver gelatin and cyanotype photographic processes, the series is delightfully unexpected, thoughtful, and visually satisfying in its abstracted forms.

"So much of the process is about letting go and having the materials guide me to where I need to go next. It's as much about what I don't do as what I do. And also accepting the fact that ultimately, I am not in control" - Joanne Dugan

Joanne Dugan's practice involves the experimental use of traditional silver-based analogue materials and technology to explore photography as a three-dimensional, physical medium. Her unique works utilise intricate, repetitive hand-cutting techniques, chemical alterations, and vintage equipment to pay homage to the physical limitations and opportunities found in analogue methods, whilst also exploring the potential for creating works informed by mindfulness practices. Each piece is fully rendered by hand, slowly.

Pictured here is a work from Joanne Dugan's newest series, Persistent Awakening, which continues to explore the artist's connection with meditation using new experimental techniques. 

"I am interested in the use of light as a contemplative medium. Each of my works is ultimately about the contemplation of light, and the myriad reactions-both physical and emotional- that interacting with light evokes." - Joanne Dugan 

Throughout her oeuvre, photographic processes are used as a means of recording the traces of light and its interaction with the photographic chemistry. Its indexical nature is used not solely as way to faithfully reproduce external realities, but also to record the gestures of the hand, the traces of the artist and her serendipitous encounters with the process. 

The title of this piece, 'Improvisation', reflects the spontaneous quality of Joanne's making process in which she constantly straddles the border between pure chance and meticulous intricacy.

We're delighted to be sharing this wonderful painterly piece from Joanne Dugan's new Persistent Awakening series.

This collage of handmade cyanotype paintings was heavily inspired by Joanne's ongoing meditation practice, as well as by her fascination into the intersections between photography and painting. Using the cyanotype process, she explores the fundamentals of the photographic medium whilst harnessing its gestural capabilities. 

In many of her works, a punctum of sorts disrupts the repetitive forms, symbolising the flash of insight that can occur through meditation. Some meditation practitioners call this moment of enlightenment, 'satori.'

Repetition is a cornerstone in Dugan's meditative practice as well as in her creative process, in which she presents the viewer with reoccurring forms constructed from abstracted shadows and structured grid lines. It is Dugan's repetition of forms, themes and structure within her collaged grids that allows for the seriality of her work. The silver gelatin pieces speak directly to the cyanotype works through her use of recognisable shapes and gridded compositions, responding to each other as if in perpetual conversation.

In many of her compositions, including this piece from her new Persistent Awakening series, there is a visual disruption, a part of the image that stands out from the rest and breaks the pattern of repetitive forms. This represents the flash of insight that occurs through meditation. In Buddhist practice this awakening is called Satori, or enlightenment.  

The negative space created by the grids in Dugan's work allows the viewer to see not just what the artist has chosen to present, but to also imagine the possibility of the abstracted forms extending in all directions infinitely. The lines created between the arranged photograms of Dugan's collages serve as a catalyst, providing a suggested path and demanding it to be followed.

Here, perfection is set aside in favour of the artist's touch. Each individual image is hand-cut and arranged on the supporting board. Placed methodically, with purposeful repetition, the artist finds meaning and stability in an uncertain time through the abstracted forms that come to life through Dugan's meditative creative process. As the artist is conveying her own experiences through her work, she is also speaking of a universal experience of isolation, uncertainty and fear that is shared through her community and indeed worldwide.

"So much of the process is about letting go and having the materials guide me to where I need to go next. It's as much about what I don't do as what I do. And also accepting the fact that ultimately, I am not in control." - Joanne Dugan

We end our 10 day focus on Joanne Dugan's new series, Persistent Awakening, with this beautifully striking piece titled 'Centering #1'. Its delicate and considered composition presents a visual practice in meditation. Utilising a slow and methodical approach to rendering a work, her mark-making is a purposeful response to her surrounding environment and the outside world. An introvert in her method, the artist works in solitary silence finding rhythm in the repetition and creative inspiration within the process.