Exhibition preview: Eva Stenram - Per Pulverem Ad Astra at Pavilion, Leeds, May 22 to June 20 2008.
Per Pulverem Ad Astra, at Pavilion's new gallery space in Saw Mill Yard, is billed as an exhibition from Mars. And true enough, the landscape photographs on display were indeed taken on the red planet.
Artist Eva Stenram didn't take the photographs herself – she downloaded them from NASA's website, re-cropping them and transforming them into analogue negatives. After this process, she left them to gather dust – not because she forgot about them, but in order to incorporate the strange white mists the dust would produce when the negatives were printed.
The result are unusual combinations of a Martian surface and that most earthly of substances, accumulated domestic dust. The foreign landscape is conjoined permanently with these odd, scratchy marks in her re-interpretation of the photos, making them a memento of the meeting of her dust and the planet.
Inspired by a fascination for images of space, and surrealist photography (in particular Man Ray's portfolio 'Electricité'), the series also invites debate around ownership and colonisation.
Eva Stenram, a Swedish artist based in London, graduated from the Slade in Fine Art Media before gaining an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art. She won first prize in the Man Group Photography Prize 2007 at the RCA, and has exhibited at galleries around the world.
Much of her work involves reproducing images which she manipulates to remove or add elements, changing the meaning of the photographs.
Pavilion is a visual arts commissioning agency that works in the areas of photography and digital media. Its new gallery will show works by emerging artists, and provide a venue for visual arts.
The Pavilion gallery is at 7 Saw Mill Yard, Round Foundry, Leeds, LS11 5WH. Open Mon - Fri, 1pm - 5pm and by appointment, admission free.
