Trish Simonite
- Michael Charlesworth -
Trish Simonite, Flint Tower, 2007; limited edition archival pigment print;
22 x 25 inches
Willow Stream, 2007; limited edition archival pigment print; 18 x 35 inches framed
Giant ruined buildings, vast angelic forms, flint the size of tree trunks, the ghosts of stones…things you’ve never seen photographed in situ—in nature, in sober, colorful fact. Trish Simonite’s latest exhibition, The History of Flint, is a walk through the countryside of Norfolk in Eastern England, but one leaves the space thinking differently about one’s own landscape, whether that is Texas, England or elsewhere.
Digitized photography is essential to both Simonite’s aesthetic and the quality of the final image: up to three photographs are layered on top of each other to create each piece. Simonite cites the work of Jerry Uelsmann as an inspiration; however, she is British, and there’s a long tradition of overprinting on landscape in British photography and related arts. One might consider overlays by filmmaker Derek Jarman: Super 8 works projected onto a surface and reshot to produce an altogether different film. Or Alfred Watkins’ documentary photographs of ley lines from the 1920s, in which he montaged three shots together into one image.
Sometimes Simonite reverses an image into a mirror of itself—juxtaposed with itself. In Flint Tower, this device really comes into its own. A totemic column of strange forms, skull-like, wing-like, helmet-like—even the mystical sign for infinity—emerge along the central seam (which is seamless, of course). Symmetry in Simonite’s work is pervasive but not overly demanding. Coupled with occasional shifts in color, these techniques constitute the extent of her interventions.
The British connection works in other ways. New nature writing in Britain, exemplified by the work of Roger Deakin, Adam Nicolson’s Sissinghurst and journals such as Archipelago, stresses ecological integration and emphasizes that landscape is something that we feel and sense as much as passively look at. This is a movement to which Simonite also belongs, since this is the level to which her production techniques give access to the natural world. In Willow Stream a skull-like flint bathes in waterborne weeds, while symmetrical willows stand on either side. Ruston reveals a small secret landscape of daffodils growing on the banks of a stream, with the Celtic forms of an ancient door’s ironwork emerging from the cool green shade of the setting.
Simonite takes a good photograph, and her excellence lies in selection, composition and printing—in feeling her way to the most effective combination of these three elements. The works oscillate between the grand spectacle and the intimate detail noticed only during a slow walk in the country. There is a quiet suggestiveness—an understated quality—yet strong surprises emerge from such politeness. Symmetries of presence and absence haunt the memory. The countryside produces an art based on experience of feeling: the feeling of place, and of one’s own exploration into a landscape. The unseen has an impact; it is there, although oftentimes invisible.
Michael Charlesworth is Professor of Art & Art History at University of Texas at Austin.