Olga Sankey - 'Scary Background Noise'

Wednesday 4 - Sunday 15 October 2017

“Listen for distant rumbles. Look for signs. Scratch the surface; peer through. Don’t be complacent. Don’t trust your eyes or your ears. The title for this exhibition comes from a YouTube video, 10 Terrifying Predictions for 2017. Number 6 addresses North Korea’s growing nuclear capability, which could ‘go from scary background noise to terrifying threat.

This series of digitally printed works, incorporating reconfigured found imagery and original marks, has been inspired by film, literature and television documentaries that deal with ideas about reality and perception, and real or imagined dangers. Transparent and semi-transparent materials allow for layers of imagery to remain as separate overlays within a final composite work. Such physical separation renders the image unstable in that it shifts in relation to a viewing position. This is much like the way that information changes depending on how it is presented, or on the nature of one’s perspective. Unless you’re standing in exactly the right spot you may miss something important.

I often work with a diptych format to encourage dialogue between two adjacent, related images, while multiple panels serve to refract an image and render its outline uncertain. This visual uncertainty is intensified by the use of exaggerated dots and blown-up engraved lines of printed images…ramping up the volume of scary background noise. ”