ANNABELLE GASPAR
Gaspar’s photographic practice is instinctual, capturing fleeting moments from countless underwater sessions – extremely demanding of both artist and model. Gaspar’s great skill as a photographer is her ability to use the underwater setting to intensify the drama within every image. Movement becomes dancelike and stillness becomes deafening. The affective quality of her photographs is born from this immersive and weightless experience.
Love you to death brings a baroque sensibility to the use of light, colour, flesh and cloth. There is a clear nod to Caravaggio and the sensibilities of 17th Century French painting. Gaspar employs a distinctly painterly use of light and the Baroque mantra of capturing a scene at it’s most intense moment of action. The photographs suggest biblical struggles of violence or passion – but crucially, Gaspar denies the viewer of any clear narrative. Gaspar’s love of theatre shine’s through in the staging and lighting of her compositions. The suggested narratives and constructed tableau of figures within the works draw on elements of theatre and production.
