Rebecca Najdowski.
Strange Weather
University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery
Artist Statement
Ambient Pressure is an ongoing project that draws attention to the ways photography has literally and conceptually ‘framed’ nature. The artworks are created from a combination of analog and digital interventions involving the manipulation and physical modification of photographs. The images undergo two phases of composition: first during capture, and then through the transformation of negatives, scans, and prints using tools such as blades, lighters, markers, plastic, rocks, bleach, and other materials.
The term ambient pressure refers to the pressure of the medium where a specific object is located. In this work it is a metaphor for the processes applied that change the material surface of the photographs highlighting that photographs are not transparent windows to the world but rather constructed representations that create a distance between nature and human experience.
About the artists
Rebecca Najdowski is an American/Australian artist whose work examines imaging technologies, the mediation of nature, and visualizations of the climate emergency.
Rebecca engages with the material and political implications of representing nature through photographic technologies. Using analog and digital materials — often counter to their intended use — her artworks offer alternative modes to habitual ways of seeing, and sensing, more-than-human nature.
Rebecca’s work has been presented internationally, including at the Museum of Australian Photography (Australia), Museum Belvédère (Netherlands), and the Belfast Photo Festival (Northern Ireland). Rebecca’s practice has been supported by a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil, an Artist Fellowship with the Center for Creative Photography (Arizona) and through residencies at Banff Centre (Canada); the Institute for Electronic Art at Alfred University (New York); and Kala Art Institute (California).
Rebecca was raised on the traditional lands of the Pueblo people in northern New Mexico, USA and currently lives and works on unceded Wurundjeri land in Australia.
Credits: Rebecca Najdowski