Allison Barnes: Neither For Me Honey Nor The Honey Bee
Exhibition Dates: January 1 – 31, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, January 1st, 2016 – 5:30 to 8:30pm
From the Artist:
The landscape in which identity is grounded is made out of memory and desire, of shifting gestures that point towards what has happened and what will happen. There are places that make us and by some means we make them. The ways in which we value and use the natural world show how our own histories become aligned with the history of a site. Neither For Me Honey Nor the Honey Bee spans the terrains of personal geographies, exploring Place as it exists in our contemporary lives, as depicted through encounters, collections and details. In a sense, Honey Bee is made up of its own fragments that have been strung together to create a portrait of intimacy and place. However, the viewer is welcome to pursue his or her own narratives within the prints, which shift in their collection and sequence during each installment – an element that alters that manner in which the work can be interpreted. The title, Neither For Me Honey Nor the Honey Bee, is the remaining fragment of a composition by Ancient Greek poet Sappho (630 BCE – 570 BCE), which means taking good without evil. It also refers to the various connections between the honeybee and the landscape, which reappear throughout this work. Bees navigate the landscape, gather up its life, bring it home and transform it. The experience of one landscape and the perception of another are both physical, and this series is about finding those moments that are in some way about extending the boundaries of the self into a landscape that we already know so well.
Biography:
Allison Barnes is a large-format photographer, printer and writer, holding a B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts and a M.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her photographs and musings often focus on the themes of intimacy and Topophilia, exploring the relationship between Space and Place and their impressions within the history of the landscape. Using prints, drawings and text, Barnes prompts her viewers to conjure up their own personal geographies and to consider how significant our experiences are to the value of Place. Research has led her to several projects, most recently completing a printing residency through the Higgins Glass Plate Negative Collection, as well as the release of her book, Neither For Me Honey Nor the Honey Bee: Photographs & Essays. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and exhibitions abroad, most recently On Landscape at Materia Gallery in Rome and The Photobook Exhibition at the Athens Photo Festival in Greece. In addition, she is the recipient of a National Park Artist Residency, as well as a recent finalist in Magenta’s Flash Forward Emerging Photographers 2015. Barnes is the co-founder of Great Northern Labs, an analog darkroom, printing and publishing platform based in Chicago. She is currently represented by Alibi Fine Art.
Select Works:
Mom with a September Web, 2014
Haircut in the A.M., 2014
(Untitled)
Emulation of my Polish Heritage, 2012
Christmas in Ellijay
Blooming Sofa
All images will be exhibited as Gelatin Silver contact prints from 8×10 negatives.
See more of Allison’s photographs online at allisonbarnes.net