Transcending the Invisible

Scatterings – David Penny

Scatterings – David Penny
16 – 18 May 12.00-17.00


David Penny’s exhibition — Scatterings — draws together a selection of photographic works made during his residency at Kings College London working with advanced nanomaterials research. New cameraless works explore dialogues between the scientific laboratory, the photographic darkroom and studio as sites of the experiment, artistic research and discovery. The project continues Penny’s interests in thinking expansively around photography, materiality, objects, and their images.
The exhibition showcases abstractions produced by direct exposure of lasers onto analogue photographic film and paper. B&W images from the series Across Paths and Into Fields, are made by tracing the trajectory of a laser as it is directed around a raman spectroscopy system used for the characterisation of nanomaterials. The technique involves an “imaging” of materials through a graphical representation of their molecular structure, with highly energised light from the laser functioning to simultaneously transform and observe the form and composition of the material.
Observing the agency of light at the same time as an image is made, moves away from the idea of the photograph as representation of something already existing. The photographic moment is less about copying what already is, and instead part of an extended process of becoming, being more speculative and productive. The images have a visual resemblance to early scientific research, where outcomes of experiments to be fixed and registered. Immaterial phenomena, which might have previously only been describable by words, or observed fleetingly, could be made tangible and measurable.
Works from the ongoing series Registrations migrate the use of the laser from the lab to the photographic studio. Unfolding from an initial, exploratory question – what happens when making a photograph using a single wavelength of light? – a set of experiments reveal a gap between a theoretical idea and the unexpected results occurring when matter, materials, and the body come into play through practice.
Photograms have been produced which record the shadows of objects into the glossy surface of colour photographic paper, through a slow accumulation of the laser across the space of the studio. As opposed to the light cast from the darkroom enlarger, here light is pointedly targeted, with exposure built up—or “painted in”—over time, an image created through multiple instances of shadowing. A completed composite ‘shadow’ only becomes visible through the photographic process.
Inspired by the discovery of the push-pin as a bit part in the history of photographic technologies, Penny has undertaken research to create handmade pins used in both the making and display of this series. The outcomes of this process are presented in the exhibition. These tools of production appear also to have imaged themselves: the pushpins and overlaid sheets of photographic paper have been inadvertently registered and condensed into each unique piece of work


David Penny is an artist and lecturer based in Manchester, his practice encompasses photography, moving image, and sculptural installation. He graduated from MA Photographic Studies at University of Westminster and his PhD project Pictures of Things and Things that are Pictures, through Manchester School of Art, was published by SOURCE as the portfolio Fragments, Monoliths, Portals. He has exhibited across the UK and internationally with a forthcoming solo exhibition at Maksla XO Gallery (Riga). His work is included in public collections at Manchester Art Gallery and The Grundy Gallery. Exhibitions include: Screen for Another Focus – Arnolfini (Bristol): Kunstall ExtraCity (Antwerp): Dovecot Studios (Edinburgh), Paper Geographies – Format International Photography Festival (Derby), REMOTE WORK – Grundy Gallery (Blackpool), A Fallen Line of Marble Drums – Snehta (Athens), A Lecture Upon the Shadow – Open Eye (Liverpool): ShaghART (Shanghai).


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