Chrissie Craig
DBA Editions Residency Award 2020
My practice examines themes of memory, absence and duration through the imagery of industrial ruins, and recent work focuses on abandoned swimming pools. The prints usually start with an analogue photographic image. Improbable signs of presence/absence and temporality create a sense of dislocation and the uncanny that trigger ideas around the cultural imperatives that made these places redundant, as well as broader thoughts about duration and mortality.
The series of five photopolymer etchings (below) transform the reflections of the pool first onto paper and then into plaster. In their similarity to X- ray imaging, and the blackness of the printing ink, there is a suggestion that the surface is being penetrated to reveal deeper and darker narratives.
contact: mailto:chrissiecraig@me.com
I LOVE THIS ALL SO MUCH !!!!
Thank you Millie, and I love your work too!!!
Brilliant work, Chrissie: atmospheric and thought-provoking. You have really captured the poignant spirit of these places .
Where did you find these fascinating places? I particularly like the 2nd image with its sepia-like tones. Bravo!
Thank you, Caspar. The pool in the first two images I came across in the middle of a farmer’s field in Surrey during a walk. It was very weird! And the long thin pool in the gallery of images is at Plas Newydd in Anglesey. Don’t you recognise it? It sticks out into the Menai Straits!
Creepy is great, Chrissie, and you cant get much creepier than deserted swimming pools, so evocative of good times past. Fab.
Very moving images haunting in their abandonment and absence of human life but tranquil at the same time. Well done Chrissie, they’re very thought provoking. Would love to see the plaster pieces up close. Love the idea of transferring the images onto an unexpected material. Exciting!