Michelle Reid
Atmospheric Disquiet
'Atmospheric Disquiet' probes the intangible, omnipresent and sometimes unsettling qualities that engage us when we experience an illuminating atmosphere.
The springboard to investigate atmospheres of the spatial paradigm developed from Gernot Böhme and Tonino Griffero's theories on atmosphere aesthetics and the felt-space.
According to philosopher Herman Schmitz each of us manifests a non-locational felt-space during our uninterrupted living experience, or ‘corporeal isles’, and these are as real as our bodies and mind. I explored visual expressions symbolic of emotions and thoughts, taking cues from Besant's 'thought forms'. Besant observed ethereal things such as ‘idea-pictures’ in abstract drawings at the turn of the twentieth century.
In these works, alertness to impermanency and elemental disquiet were invigorated through disruptive light and noiseless places influenced by J.M.W Turner's notion of dematerialising the elements. Intending to find a softened pictorial field in a nearly textureless surface, the paintings are composed with thinly applied and subtracted materials in a colour palette akin to the first and last light of the day.
