FROM AN ELSEWHERE UNKNOWN
Sian Bonnell

Softbound with gatefold cover, 9.5" x 11.75", 64 pages
9 color and 16 black-and-white illustrations
2004, Ffotogallery
Essays by Mark Haworth-Booth and Mel Gooding
Edition: 1000

From the Publisher:
Removed from the domestic environment, Sian Bonnell’s objects – jelly moulds, colanders, plates and glasses – are charged with an energy whose imaginary sources we can only guess at. From an Elsewhere Unknown, the British artist’s first major monograph with essays by Mark Haworth-Booth and Mel Gooding, brings together a number of mysterious and beautiful tableaux which are transformed by the magical alchemy of photography.

About the Authors:
Mark Haworth-Booth is one of Britain’s leading authorities on mainstream international photography and is the former Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. He is Visiting Professor of Photography at the University of the Arts London and a freelance curator and writer.

Mel Gooding is one of the UK’s most respected writers on the visual arts whose informed criticism spans the last twenty five years. He has written extensively on abstract art and his writings have been published worldwide in numerous publications and periodicals.

Exhitibtion notes:
This exhibition brings together works made over the last few years by British artist, Sian Bonnell. Taking domesticity as her starting point, Bonnell places everyday, household items in rural contexts and photographs them within the landscape. Appearing at first quirky, whimsical and humorous, the images also allude to the domestic role of women in society and environmental abuse.

Her most recent series, Glowing develops this domestic theme, where jelly moulds, colanders and other kitchen utensils and objects are placed incongruously in the countryside. The objects are lit from within and omit a luminosity which is accentuated by the light boxes in which the images are placed. Surrounded by grasses and flora, the glowing objects appear alien and strange in their new environment. This juxtaposition of nature and artifice hint to the increasingly synthetic nature of our day-to-day living.

Many of her earlier monochrome pictures, some exploiting the arcane qualities of pinhole photography utilise similar jelly moulds, cake tins and other plastic containers, and exude intensely sculptural qualities, aping the natural forms of the rural environment.

The artist says of her work: I am interested in the places we go when we are vacant; when we are taking part in the reality of everyday life but drift off, like when I am doing the ironing. I am intrigued by the absurd, life and the reality of our lives is steeped in absurdity so although my images may look surreal, to me they are a kind of absurd reality.

Bonnell’s highly individual work fuses the boundaries between still life, landscape and sculpture. In so doing, she creates playful yet provocative depictions which heighten our perception and pleasure of both our domestic and natural environments.

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