Palmerini, P., 2023.

Paper Geographies

aper Geographies presents five archaeologies of place: A three-century old daqing tree, uprooted and relocated to a new and unfamiliar landscape: An ancient Grecian column toppled by a gust of wind: A melancholic collection of empty packaging casings: Ruptures in the post-industrial Welsh landscape: Evidence of the mythic beasts of European folklore. Each posits relics that are fragile testimonies of memory, history, movement and time. Place and photography are both presented in a flow between stasis and movement.

Five artists are brought together to consider the lost objects of natural and human histories through the materiality of the photographic image. The artists presented here work with and through the expanded field of photography. Whether chemical-analogue processes, sculptural intervention or the static gaze of the topographic camera, this exhibition eschews permanence. Presenting a series of traumas and traces, artworks allude to the ephemeral, melancholic nature of time and erasure, and our attachment to history that takes place at the level of myth. Collectively the photographic works in this exhibition present a cautionary vision of the future - echoes from a civilisation to come.


Polly Palmerini presents an assemblage of staged and found imagery, in the search for two mythical beings, the French Tarasque and Greek Chimera, bringing together fragments found in archives of local history and folklore.


https://formatfestival.com/event/paper-geographies/