Naomi Ballance, Statement, Revisiting Renaissance

Naomi L. Ballance

'Revisiting the Renaissance' is a series of seven black and white photographs that address the spatial context and illusion of depth within the Italian Renaissance paintings of Titian. Utilising Titian as an icon of linear composition and Western aesthetics 'Revisiting the Renaissance' directly explores image and space in relation to pattern and ornamentation.

Most often in Western sculpture and paintingthe subject matter provides the emotional tone, and figures define and dominate the images while other decorative features provide a setting. This series of photographs proposes how these roles may be reversed or recreated by eliminating colour, texture and the appeal of content, and by giving dominance to issues of stylisation, pattern and design.

Altering the spatial context and the form in which the images are presented offers and an alternative approach to viewing and considering Titian. The original format of the paintings is retained to suggest a possible perspective, however using a process of layering the images are distorted and the perspective becomes flattened and figures decorative. The images were selected for the importance of the human figure within their compositions, and through obliterating the background detail the Titian images are reduced to a simplified, stylised figure ground relationship in which ornamentation and the connection between pattern and image can be explored.