AirSpace Graduate Residency - Chloe Ashley - a Mid-Term Look

AirSpace Graduate Resident Chloe Ashley has been incredibly busy over the first 3 months of her time at the gallery.

Here, Chloe has kept a blog of her works, workings, findings and research

in her own words

Chloe Ashley is a fine art practitioner specialising within archaic and alternative photographic techniques. Recently completing her BA (Hons) Fine Art at Loughborough University, Ashley has exhibited frequently across the Midlands.

Influenced by artist such as Mariah Robertson and John Stezaker, her interests revolve around the notion of the uncanny; this is investigated through photographic distortion to discover the jarring from the mundane. Ashley’s current fascination with Sigmund Freud’s discussion of the Unheimlich as a ‘species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and has long been familiar’ (Freud, 1919: 124), has directed her exploration of the unfamiliar/familiar within the everyday. The focus on the contemporary everyday is due to its association with the familiar, alongside the cognitive dissonance that is provoked through the exploration of contemporary spaces and objects with archaic photographic processes.

In pursuing distortion through photography, a vast range of alternative processes has featured within the practice. Though at present, her focus on Collage and Bleach processes has occurred due to the level of distortion these can generate. The creation of the preparatory imagery occurs primarily with the use of a Houghton Quarter Plate Camera, manufactured in 1911, loaded with large format film.