b. 1988, Auckland, New Zealand.

2012 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) University of Canterbury

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Born in Auckland and attending secondary school in Wellington, Emily Hartley-Skudder is now a Christchurch-based artist. Since 2009 Hartley-Skudder has participated in solo and group exhibitions throughout New Zealand.

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With a unique ability to enchant, tiny replicas of the ordinary entice us to project our fantasies onto them, accentuating a general preoccupation with recreating aspects of our everyday lives. It is this replication of the commonplace that fascinates me, the incessant doubling of activity. My use of miniatures promotes the creation of the uncanny and subtly peculiar, the seemingly standard objects gradually separate from their initial reading. Suspiciously pleasant, the paintings become a generic reproduction of aspects of our routine existence, exalted through obsessive rendering demanding such time and care. They are still lifes, but the objects depicted are painted from photographs of fakes; the imitations of a supposed reality, like representational paintings and photographs themselves.

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Hartley-Skudder’s process involves a series of steps that each remove the image further from its original reality. The artist seeks out and collects a range of miniatures, models and toys. These objects are arranged into carefully lit scenes that are photographed, and the photographs are then carefully translated into paintings. Hartley-Skudder’s practice draws together imagery from varied levels of visual culture and places them in a fine art context. Her work references the traditions of conventional still life painting, along with photorealism, commercial stock photography, cookbook illustrations and advertising imagery from both toy and real-life homeware catalogues. The artist aims to investigate the viewers perception of reality through the photographic of portrayal of artificial objects and the somewhat ‘realistic’ painted photograph. The emulation of a photographic depth of field in paint speaks to the longstanding relationship between the mediums of photography and painting. Combined with this, her images reinforce the uncanny doubling of the everyday that occurs all around us; most specifically, when images of the home are placed within the home.

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Emily Hartley-Skudder’s Artist Talk

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www.emilyhartleyskudder.com

http://www.lauriesimmons.net/photographs/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_life

http://www.suescottgallery.com/programs/texts/Constructed-Realities-Contemporary-Photography/

http://www.etsy.com/shop/MissMPhotography section_id=11349393

 

Emily Hartley-Skudder PDF