sheep

The Aesthetics of Dispersal 2

 
 
The aesthetics of dispersal is phrase that was coined by photography writer
Peter Ireland, to describe a common theme of mine.
 
It is very true that
images such as the one above
appear at regular intervals and seem to have
done so throughout most of my career.
 
These images contain a range of subjects,
in this case it is sheep. Yet it seems that it
is not the sheep that I am particularly
interested in but the spaces in between them
and the way that they have arranged themselves
over the hillside.
 
I have written about this subject in a previous post.
 


Tony Bishop

Tony, an Invercargill friend of mine has an exhibition of his paintings
at Milford Gallery in Dunedin.
On Friday night I went to his opening
and then crossed over the road to see Billy Apple’s show
at Brett McDowell Gallery, previously known as Marshall Seifert Gallery.

This is a detail from one of Tony’s paintings and I have put it on this posting
because for some reason the stylised way in which these sheep
have been painted made me laugh out loud. I have no idea why
but it has something to do with the way
in which there is absolutely no visual overlapping
at all between one sheep and another, something that would not happen
in real life of course.

I suspect that one of the reasons why it appealed to me so strongly
is that it illustrates a motif that persists in my work, the ‘aesthetics
of dispersal’.

Three of four months ago I took the photo below. It’s nothing more than
a sketch, but it illustrates the point.


Central

Parts of Central Otago are rocky landscapes as in the top half of this photograph.
There are flat areas too, often with sheep on them, sometimes fruit. Remember to click on the photo to see, in this case, more sheep.