EMMA HOLMES was born and grew up in Spain until the age of 12, then moved from Chicago, to Chile and then to Devon, Vermont, Mexico, and finally to London.
Emma Holmes presents her new collage series of self-lit assemblages, furthering her exploration of city life and the ubiquity of the image.
Loosely assembled but meticulously arranged constructions lean against the gallery walls from a shelf or the floor. Magazine clippings as well as painted elements and disparate objects are lightly clasped on sheets of acetate or Perspex, overlapping and obscuring each other to make the homogenous image. All of this is backlit by the cool glow of fluorescent tubing.
Holmes's works speak in the syntax of advertising and the grammar of geometry, subverting the power of idealised images. Her structures materialise the moment of passing pages with the collisions of images from both sides of the page which are then integrated into the structure of a coherent whole.
Her subjects range from iconic artworks and museum viewing to urban living, with the city taking a leading role in her play on the domination of perspective. Her exploded fragments come together to capture a world in constant motion. Echoing a denial of the self-evidence of the vanishing point, multiplicity floods everything including the eye of the beholder.
Scenes unfold in this vantage-less landscape of plural viewpoints, requiring that we acknowledge the fluidity of the city, and understand the multiplicity of the self from beyond the language of anxiety.