Exhibition: ‘Troy Ruffels: Cinder’ at James Makin Gallery, Collingwood, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 13th June 13 – 6th July 2013

This scratching away at reality. Abstractness of becoming.

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Tension. Music. Light. Undertow.

A current below the surface of the sea moving in the opposite direction to the surface current.
An implicit quality, emotion, or influence underlying the surface aspects of something and leaving a particular impression.

Imagined, chthonian (of or relating to the underworld, from Greek khthonios, of the earth) landscape.

(Dis)possession of the land, as though the land is rebelling against subjective gaze of the viewer.

Prosaic titles (Bracken, Cinder, Rift) with a poetic zest (remains of the day).

Spaces of isolation / human marking (thumbprints on work) / absence / presence.

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Manifestations of the mind.

The landscape as Other.

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Dr Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog
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Many thankx to James Makin Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Gustave Courbet
The Wave
c. 1869

Troy Ruffels
Sea #3 (remains of the day)
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107 cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels
Bracken
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107 cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels
Cinder
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107 cm
Edition of 12

Troy Ruffels
Sea #4 (Second Winter)
2013
Archival solvent based inkjet print on composite aluminium
107 cm x 107 cm
Edition of 12

“This exhibition sees photo media artist Troy Ruffels employ innovative techniques to create his evocative imagery, which is heavily informed by the natural world. Ruffels has developed a unique process of drawing from multiple photographic source images to create each final work, which is subsequently printed using solvent based inks onto composite aluminium sheets, as opposed to standard archival papers. By utilising the reflective qualities of the aluminium Ruffels illuminates his intriguing landscape imagery with shifting light effects.

“Photo-media artist Troy Ruffels extends the boundaries of traditional photography towards a realm of limitless creative possibilities. Observing and recording sites within the Tasmanian wilderness and beyond, Ruffels draws from multiple source images to arrive at his final works. In doing so the artist weaves a highly personal and emotive response to various locations within the natural world that have remained lodged in his imagination. His process allows for a range of atmospheres and moods to be evoked, from a dreamlike softness, to a densely weighted gravity.

Overall the works in ‘Cinder’ reflect a highly personal response to place, as in the process of revealing nature’s secrets the artist reveals a part of himself. Ruffels displays his impressive technical and creative prowess in transfiguring and reassembling the elements, blending fact with fiction to tell the understory of the night.” (Marguerite Brown, Cat. Essay JMG Journal, 2013)”

Press release from the James Makin Gallery website