FABRICE BIGOT - 'Flores Venerae'
Lyric Emerging Artist
Gallery (in association with MARS Gallery) - 28th April – 23rd
June 2017
Flores Venerae 10 (2017) 163 X 64 cm edition of 4
I first encountered the artist’s work on the web, had heard of positive reviews and liked what I saw. So I was grateful for this opportunity to see the actual photographs and was not disappointed. Even photographic reproductions can mislead in scale, illumination and colour and are at best a rough guide but in this case the prints exceed expectation in size, resolution and superb tonal range. In recent years the artist has concentrated on flowers, viewed in close-up at twilight, emphasising an alien, decidedly sinister world. The title of the current series (and show) Flores Venerae gives little away, part Spanish for flowers, part combination of perhaps venerable and venereal. The opening speech by David O’ Halloran, an invited curator, was firmly in favour of the erotic and it is assuredly foremost in earlier work. But while flowers have a long and venerable tradition as symbols for sex or passion, here the sense is less of disease than mystery. To see them as possibly the mysterious and fascinating symptoms of sexually transmitted disease, for instance, seems troubling on any number of levels or frankly comic and neither tallies with the elegance and subtlety of the pictures. The title is better treated as simply a surreal rejection of standard associations and an affirmation of their dark side.
Flores Venerae 3 (2017) 95 X 64 cm edition of 4
What is the dark side of passion? It need not be repulsion actually, but
something more insidious. In as much as this can be represented by flowers, one
might start by noting that the pictures are not of isolated specimens or a
traditional still life, but of actual gardens and so are properly small
landscapes. The actual locations turn out to include a range of Asian as well
as Australian cities, for some reason. The flowers occupy not just a curiously
glowing foreground but recede into a darkened background and while the focus is
on a single specimen we are aware of the profusion of growth around it, often
of overlapping or intertwining parts. It is often not easy to see where one
plant begins and another ends, or indeed what is not a plant. This indefinite
spreading or sprawling, I submit, is really a prime feature of the dark side
and makes it more of a dark place. If the flowers deal in sexual allure, the
mystery lies not so much in rampant proliferation or propagation but in the
unseen and incalculable implications. The thrill or threat does not remain in
just genitalia but extends to other, higher organs, other matters. That looms
as the great unknown, the surrounding darkness to the moment.
Flores Venerae 6 (2017) 95 X 64 cm edition of 4
The sense of danger or menace is explicit in the pictures of cacti with
their formidable array of spines, although these were less in evidence than in
the 2015 series Naked Garden, where
the pictures were confined to black and white, giving them a more austere and
formal detachment. But elaborate defences hold their own attractions for some
and such intimate contemplation only adds to an ominous atmosphere. Exoticism may seem part of the attraction but
in an email the artist stressed that strangeness is not always sexy for his
pictures and that may be more of a distraction. It is often familiar flowers,
seen at the right time and place that best demonstrate the allure he seeks.
Naked Garden 4 (2015) 110 X 74 cm edition of 4
Reviewing the Naked Garden
series, The Age critic Robert Nelson concluded that the aim was essentially
sculptural and dealt with seeing exotic plants as elaborate exercises in mass
and volume, and while this gets at the curious ambiguity of scale, it hardly
accounts for the darkness or contiguity, or why the ‘sculptures’ should be
viewed by night, and if by a voyeur (as he supposed) one of decidedly dry
interests. The photographer also affirmed an interest in complex botanical
structure, which partly explains the choice of cacti, but again begs the
question of the role of darkness and overgrowth. Interestingly, where the
photographer focuses on a single flower and allows the background to be just
black or blank, as in the Untitled series
from 2016, the effect is closer to a botanical specimen or document. The
lighting, while still low key, does not quite bring another world.
Untitled 4 (2016) 17 X 17 cm edition of 3
When does a literal document become something more? Generally this is a
matter of precedent and practice and depends as much on choice of subject as
treatment or technique. Issues of realism and objectivity are hotly disputed in
any case and photography has its factions, either passively recording events or
staging highlights and issues and in various combinations. Bigot’s position
here is as intriguing as his loiterings in the twilight zone. He is also a
thoughtful and articulate artist and I have drawn on his statement for the Naked Garden show, reprinted on his
website. While he identifies with street photography and a faith in recording
surroundings, he nevertheless is drawn to its quietest moments, most
traditional corners. And while he works with a small camera without a tripod in
order to quickly take advantage of city gardens encountered at a suitable hour,
what he wants from his flowers is no longer strictly a matter of observation
but rather intervention or construction. The structure to petals and stems is
subtly massaged by torch light. One gradually realises that the light is not
just the ambient light of dusk or distant moonlight or even streetlight. The
light is too diffuse, shadows too soft for that. It is in fact subtly supplemented
by the photographer and it is this heightened or dream-like glow that grants
the images a symbolic rather than botanical meaning. It is what makes the
darkness an expressive rather than literal situation. Consequently, the plants
smooth emergence or retreat into shadow takes on a strange prominence and
renders distance and scale mysterious.
Flores Venerae 5 (2017) 95 X 64 cm edition of 4
With the digital revolution, much of this could have been accomplished
with software and initially I supposed that Bigot, like so many contemporary
photographers, manipulated his images in Photoshop. However this reckons
without his commitment to reportage, an allegiance to street photography, where
framing and exposure must be caught in the moment. The more considered
judgement available with software, no matter how convenient, is thus antithetical
to his aesthetic although he concedes that some minor tweaking to hue intensity
is done in Photoshop, but this little more than traditional dark room
adjustments. In this too, the photographer is distinctive and one cannot help
wondering where this approach might lead, what further subjects lend themselves
to such treatment?
Earlier work, as noted, has dealt with the frankly erotic in darkened
surroundings. There, dramatic angles and solarising possibly owe something to
Man Ray, while a series from 2015 called A Place which Keeps
Calling Me deals in giddy high-rise perspectives reduced to trails
of lights in the night and a futuristic desolation. Other work from 2013-2015 picks out vintage
city alleys around Melbourne by night and feel almost like movie sets. It comes
as little surprise to then learn that Bigot spent twenty years working in the
French cinema mostly as a film editor, later as an assistant director and that
he has also made short videos which share nocturnal settings. The movies deal
in wordless surreal scenarios involving a woman (performed by Jane Burton) in
darkened interiors. Formal concerns there lie more with theatrical or Film Noir
lighting, ghostly events and a simmering ambient soundtrack. The effect, which
might have been nostalgic or a pastiche, is closer to say, David Lynch than
Jacques Tourneur and retains an edge, invites longer, more elaborate
narratives. All confirm a taste for the dark, sexy and surreal and reveal Flores Venerae as a new refinement with
colour, a greater restraint to the erotic or decadent.
Digital photography has also brought a convergence with video, so it is
not surprising to find photographers adding longer time spans and motion to
their pictures. In this regard the videos might appear more central to Bigot’s concerns
than stills but the artist sees both formats as equally valuable and viable.
This greater scope suggests that while remaining on the dark side, Bigot is
unlikely to settle for anything too predictable or comfortable.
All images courtesy of the artist.
My gratitude for assistance in preparing this review.
OTHER ONLINE RESOURCES
The artist's site
