Caitlin Montie Greer

“Into the Ordinary” 2008

“Into the Ordinary” is a series of photographs that aims to draw attention to the aesthetic potential of everyday things. The photographs feature over-looked objects in public environments. In the terms of the ready-made, the intention is to ‘dignify commonplace objects’ by elevating their status to that of art. The process involves identifying a certain type of public environment, one that is visited by a wide demographic of people such as a local market or high street in London. The artist has then explored this environment and photographs are made of the objects found there.

What is of particular interest to this series is the aesthetic potential of the everyday, and that which could be assumed to lack aesthetic merit. The objects are chosen because the artist finds them to be beautiful and the intention is to produce images that offer the viewer a glimpse of this way of seeing. Photographic images of this nature have the potential to affect the viewer and encourage them to see the world differently. What is demonstrated by the series is that even within a consumer driven society there still exist small redeeming factors that make the rest worthwhile.

July 2010 - Greer’s work featured in an exhibition of emerging british talent at Broadway Gallery, New York City.

Underground on BROADWAY is a London built exhibition of young, emerging British talent showing at Broadway Gallery, New York this summer. Made up of nine artists’ work, the show is eclectic in both medium and specific subject, a collection of early inspiration, showing how these initial pieces play off one another in terms of style and raw imagination.

The opening will be an innovative interactive experience, with live web streaming back to England for those who couldn’t be in New York, and the opportunity to text and email the artists participating creating a trans-Atlantic perspective between two countries miles apart. Encouraged by Underground’s sister show Pop-Up NY, this is will be a unique opportunity to see two cities in visual dialogue, as the works, ranging widely in medium, will hang adjacent from one another. Documented constantly online, Underground on BROADWAY aims to manipulate all that modern communication can offer, and the climatic opening will be one not to be missed.

Often reliant on place and surrounding, Underground’s works are reactions to the world their artists find themselves in, visual expressions of situation and its currents of influence. What many of the artists were particularly taken with was the idea of their art traveling from its place of origin to be deliberately displayed in another environment, and the effect that this would have on both the art and viewers’ reactions to it. Adam Higman’s piece is a tampered counting ‘clicker’ encased in a perspex box. The counter holds the amount of clicks it took for the box, and the show itself, to travel from London to New York; it is a three dimensional illustration of traveled time enclosed in space. Leanne Elliott (RART) captures the dark, wet shining pavement between a Londoner’s legs; her photography, 120 Nights of Sodom, tells the tales of a city’s nightly underbelly. Sam Hodge takes its estates in broad daylight, framing for us a view across the street in Queens Road Peckham, South London. Sophie Duckworth’s Habliments are a conception of place. Coloured threads dripping with the purity of white wax and the decadence of gold, these are hanging memories of a heritage imagined, a past visualised in an ecclesiastical vision casting shadows on the wall.

Origin, of place, person and reaction, feature throughout the Underground on BROADWAY show. Only encouraged by one another’s varied approach, the show demonstates how each individual artist pushes the boundaries of their visual exploration, through their mediums of installation, painting, drawing and photography.

ARTISTS

Ing Chua-Lee, Sophie Duckworth, Katie Elder, Leanne Elliott (RART), Adam Higman, Sam Hodge, Ita Maude Wooller (RART), Caitlin Montie Greer (RART), Tim Sargent

“Simulation” 2006.

“Simulation” is a collection of work by six artists exploring contemporary notions of photography in relation to the image world of post-modern and digital culture in which boundaries between photography and reality, genre and media, are in a process of dissolution.

Rehal’s work looks at television as a medium of communication that is experienced  by countless millions every day. It creates a false reality that we are not asked to question. The work challenges this acceptance and demonstrates the futile waste of emotion on what is essentially a simulation.  

“Commemorated loss” 2006

“Commemorated loss” is an exploration of how elderly people memorialize the things that  time has taken away from them. It looks at private histories and how one chooses deal with the loss of a loved one or a particular thing that was important to them.

This work allows the viewer to look into the face of an aging person as a means to understand what strength it takes to bear a lifetime and cope with loss. What is demonstrated by these works is an enduring resilience to time through the object the individual clings on to.