Henrietta Simson

The advance of photography in the 19th century saw the culmination of an ideological development in the West, a process that started with the discovery of Renaissance perspective and whose aim was complete verisimilitude in visual representation. This ideology’s ‘reality’ is a fully objective equivalent of natural vision, which ensures the status of the observer and their relationship with the observed is rigidly defined and controlled. Simson positions her research critically to this canon and approaches her subject by investigating pictorial methodologies from the early Renaissance that employed an experimental use of perspective. She also manipulates photographic projections, setting up a dynamic between the content of the source photograph and the new site, between different visual languages. This process raises a question around the notion of presence and non-presence, reality and image. Simson’s paintings and projected images examine the boundaries created by perspective and photography’s assumption of a ‘true’ visual equivalency and present an alternative visualisation of the construction and representation of landscape space.

In tre and quattrocento painting a shift in paradigm from a medieval metaphysical world to the beginnings of Renaissance scientific thought occurs. This crossover, from one mindset to another, can be seen on the picture surface, actually within the construction of the image itself. Its visual manifestation is a painted space that is at once physically believable and unbelievable. This medieval slippage is an access point that Simson exploits: By removing all narrative elements from the original image, changing the format and painting only the landscape space that is left, her paintings present an alternative construction of space to that defined by the rules of perspective. This is compounded with a contemporary application of traditional materials: gesso on board, pigments and metal leaf. The process ensuring that her ‘copy’ maintains a direct material relationship with the source image.

This mixing and use of found imagery includes the projection of photographic landscape images onto a support and the alteration of their perceived materiality through various techniques. These include drawing directly on top of the image — doubling it up through a conflation of photographic projection and drawn mark — gilding or cutting into the screen etc. This process creates multi-layered works whose re-framing of the source image establishes a dynamic with its new context, exploring the reading and interpretation of both. The illusion of real space is broken, while at the same time the photograph is emphasised as a trace, a direct link to the real. Although often possessing a stillness and immersive quality, the projection’s mechanisms of production are always exposed, inviting a logical interpretation of what is visually mysterious.

This research is an ongoing methodology involving reinterpretations of the representation of landscape space in images, from historical paintings to contemporary photographic sources. The historical repositioning of images creates dual and contradictory effects and sets up an enquiry into the nature of visual representation itself. The process examines the boundaries created by perspective and photography’s normative equivalency of ‘natural vision’ and presents an alternative visualisation of the construction and representation of landscape space. It explores notions of the ‘real’ in photography and ‘original’ in painting. The removal of narrative and the recontextualisation of imagery creates a confusion of ideological value and highlights the different ways meaning is interpreted in different visual languages. The painted or photographic space is freed from its historical context and so becomes free it in time, allowing a fresh engagement with it. The mechanisms of copying and tracing, of altering the relationship of the artwork to the site, question different modes of production and media and how these affect the way we read images. The relationship of the copy to the original is highlighted as ambiguous and through different means, ideas associated with inauthentic and authentic experience, with the de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation of the image, are explored. Copies become originals and in doing so create new visual and spatial possibilities.

Born in 1971, lives and works in London.

Education
2005 – 2007: MA Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, London
1990 -1993: BA Fine Art, Bristol School of Art, University of the West of England
1992: Erasmus Exchange Programme, Facultad des Belles Artes, Universidad de Barcelona

Solo Exhibitions
2010: ‘VOLTA NY’, Solo booth with Man&Eve
2008: ‘Over the Frontier’, Man&Eve, London — ‘Lost Narratives’, Slade Research Centre, UCL, London
2007: Slade Summer School of Fine Art, London — ‘Mystery Songs and History Pictures’, Foreign Press Association, London

Selected Group Exhibitions
2009: ‘Lulled into believing’, a collaboration between Esther Teichmann and Henrietta Simson, Man&Eve, London — ‘The Voice and Nothing More’, Simson&Volley, Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, London— ‘spaces/places/senses/places/senses/spaces’, Simson&Volley, The Visual Arts Centre, Portsmouth, Virginia
2008: ‘Group Exhibition of Gallery Artists’, Man&Eve, London
2007: ‘Aqua Wynwood art fair’, Miami, USA — ‘Year_07 Art Projects’, London — ‘MA/MFA Degree Show’, Slade School of Fine Art, London
2006: ‘The New Contemporaries 2006’, Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool and London — ‘Scape’, Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, London — ‘The Sefton Open’, Netherton Arts Centre, Merseyside
2005: ‘The Jerwood Drawing Prize’ (UK touring exhibition) — ‘Recent Work’, Lauderdale House, Highgate, London — ‘Recent Work’, Jenny Granger Gallery, Whitstable — ‘Home Life’, Stroud House Gallery, Gloucestershire
2004: ‘Featured Artist’, The Blue Wing Gallery, Padstow, Cornwall

Awards
2007: Celeste Art Prize Short-list — Clare Winsten Memorial Award, Slade School of Fine Art — Gordon Luton Award for Fine Art, The Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers
2006: Slade Alumni Scholarship
1999: Dearle and Henderson Art Prize

Residencies
2002-2003: Artist in Residence, The Art Factory, Luton, Bedfordshire

Select Publications
2009: ‘Immediations’, Courtauld Institute research journal — ‘Lulled into Believing’ exhibition catalogue
— Dazed&Confused, review of exhibition — Guardian online, review of exhibition
2007: Celeste Art Prize exhibition catalogue
2006: Bloomberg New Contemporaries exhibition catalogue — Agenda, Wallpaper Magazine, November — Art Monthly, November — Art Review, September —
Grayson Perry, The Times 2, 15 November
2005: The Jerwood Drawing Prize exhibition catalogue