Clock, Daimaru, Rocket Boost, Sail Yards and The Conductor, Tom Blachford
Provenance: from the artist
Exhibited: 22nd November - 8th December 2019, Backwoods Gallery, Collingwood
Tom Blachford is a Melbourne based artist working across visual mediums to explore the history and future of cities, structures and the built environment. His practice has traditionally involved the exploration and capture of conventional and existing structures around the world, almost always at night. His use of long exposure photography has allowed him a glimpse into other worlds that sit before us but just beyond the limits of human perception. Always working with existing light sources such as the full moon (Midnight Modern) or the neon lights of Tokyo (Nihon Noir) he works to distil cinematic moments from architectural marvels as well as mundane street views (1).
In the Centro Verso collection that these pieces form part of, Blachford turns his signature style of nocturnal photography towards his home city of Melbourne, Australia.
The images, glistening in purple and blue hues appear to be collages of multiple cities around the world, blended into one impossible dystopia. In reality the images are all single exposures taken in this case from around 57 floors in the air from a carefully selected rooftop in Melbourne’s CBD.
Inspired by Escher as well as the impossible cities of the Sci Fi and Anime Genres, Blachford says “I am fascinated by how one simple tweak can completely shot-circuit our brains ability to perceive depth, perspective and time.”
Blachford’s work is rooted in his fascination for the camera to act as a bridge between our world and dream worlds that are just out of reach of our senses. By using a long lens, extended exposure times and rotation the images are able to transport cities into their own cyberpunk metropolis defying logic and engineering.
View Centro Verso 2521 at the Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2021 here (2).