Christopher Whitfeld

The earth-works series combines photography and ceramics in pursuit of new ways of making images. Photos taken on the South Coast of New South Wales were extruded, resin printed as stamps and then imprinted into clay. The stamp imagery ranged from indigenous plants and animals to architectural and iconographic elements. Compositions were reached by exploring repetition and the deconstruction of these images divorced from their original contexts. The unglazed surfaces display the raw texture of the impressions and the way clay is inclined to crack and tear. Each final panel emerged through process-based enquiry, recontextualising and re-presenting aspects of landscape, fossilising them into one surface and making a new kind of tactile image or way of seeing. This body of work reflects my perception of human activities, technologies and processes as extensions of the natural world.