Image: Jemima WYMAN Kaleidoscopic catchment 1995, digital photographs, 50 h x 44 w cm. Courtesy of the artist.
This work is comprised of a series of digital photographs, created in 1995. Measuring 50 centimetres high and 44 centimetres wide, the work is displayed in a white frame on a white background. The work is irregular in shape with the digital photographs moving out at different angles from a single point of axis at the centre.
Fourteen separate photographs are joined together by tape, applied behind the artwork and as such are unable to be seen. The separate photographs are all uniform in size and fan out from a centre point that draws the eye, towards the top and middle of the work positioned at sharp angles from this focal point. All the lines converge to draw attention to this focal point, where a small individually cut section of photograph has been attached, 1 centimetre square in size, the individual photographs radiating outward from this centre point.
Lines of different coloured yarn in black, yellow, red, blue, green and brown shift their way around the work and across the photographs surface, in stripes of colour approximately 1 centimetre thick that encourage the observer to move their eye around the work in a clockwise direction. The lines of coloured yarn shift and pulsate slightly off kilter giving movement similar to the coloured crystals in a kaleidoscope when one rotates the tubeto create a new and distinct but repeating pattern.
At the top left, at the 11 o’clock position the metal armature which creates a framework for the type of weaving completed in this artwork is shown, that known as an Ojo de Dios or God’s Eye weaving. Here the yarn is pulled taut with precise bands of coloured yarn forming uniform parallel and horizontal bands across the photographs. At the bottom of the artwork, at the 6 o’clock position, the thread of the weaving is looser, with the yarn displayed in the photographs in the bottom right hand corner pulling away, slack and exposing space between the lines of thread typically bound tightly to the cross-shaped frame to which it is woven and attached. The photographs are high gloss, and the light bounces off the sheen of their surface.
The artist, Jemima Wyman, describes the work as follows:
That work started off as a simple metal armature that I then wove coloured wool over to make a human-sized sculpture with an inside and outside, a full-bodied presence, similar to a ‘God’s eye’. The idea was that it would represent a magnetic field for the universe through its colourful woven patterns and complex surface. But then I took photos of the work from various angles and it just made sense to tape these together and recreate the layering of patterns with greater complexity and in resistance to its logical structure. Basically, I broke up a three-dimensional ‘figure’ by photographing it and collaging it to form a space or ‘ground’.