Walls with Attitude is a new essay on the work of 2008 Photo Art graduate Elliott Wilcox available over at Photomonitor:
"From the moment we are born we embark upon a lifelong relationship with walls, with all their connotations of containment, protection, division, demarcation, ownership and all the emotive associations that they arouse in us. Walls that we decorate with wallpaper or paint, hang with paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, ornaments etc., become familiar, affording us the sanctity and reassurance of that familiarity and the confirmations of our identity that they bring, as their trappings weave the ambience of domesticity. Other walls such as those in schools, in our workplaces, or those of transit lounges, waiting rooms or prisons offer totally different connotations. These have impersonal, neutral qualities, walls that denote the non-place that we are rarely able to interact with, or to impose our identities upon; and if we do so, we do it at the risk of prosecution, sanction or other punishment. Walls are not to be touched lest they become marked – their history only scantily marked by light, heat or dust, a history that is subtly registered, weightlessly applied. Structurally strong, paradoxically walls often have vulnerable, fragile surfaces that we feel compelled to protect. So, while they protect us we also need to protect them – this symbiotic relationship is one that is unsung, rarely acknowledged, yet a timeless and enduring one." Continue reading ...
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