Critical Review – Stephen Waddell, Contemporary Art Gallery

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
-Scott Adams

Today I ardently stumbled into Stephen Waddell’s show at the Contemporary Art Gallery.  Considering my  glorious mood (sarcasm intended), I was pleasantly surprised to find myself basically alone.  It was just me and the art. I went in knowing very little about Stephen Waddell or his practice, only having glimpsed briefly a few of his photographs.  I wasn’t excited, but I also wasn’t apprehensive, which, perhaps is the best state to be in when viewing something; alone and without care.  That doesn’t sound very appealing, but I assure you it’s meant to be.

Considering I later found out that the show was intended as a sort of retrospective, featuring many of Waddell’s earlier works in order to give perspective to his more recent ones, I fortunately stumbled into the room full of his earlier works first.  Initially, I was overwhelmingly unimpressed; the first thing that caught my eye, fittingly (I’m a film student), were two super 8 videos being projected on to a couple of walls (at right angles to each other).  So I sat down and let myself watch these videos; one was a series of people, shot from behind, unknowingly being followed, the other a long, over-cranked shot of a person with a shirt over their head, just sitting.  Both were interesting in a voyeuristic way, but made me feel empty.  Being I wasn’t particularly in the mood for empty, I continued around the rest of the room, a series of photographs and paintings.  Although, I couldn’t have cared less for the paintings (in my opinion, lazy Impressionist imitations), I must say the photographs did strike me.  They were beautifully composed, yet the content found within seemed, well, “found;” it felt like street photography, but it did not look it.  I found myself staring at these photographs, and losing myself in a kind of visually beautiful voyeurism.  I had never associated something aesthetically beautiful, or, in fact, any beauty at all with voyeurism, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself having a somewhat unique experience.

This was a good introduction, or warm up, leading into my exploration of the second room, full of Waddell’s more recent work.  Thankfully, there were no paintings here, just an array of physically large photographic prints.  Each single print was colorful and vibrant, beautiful, yet still contained that voyeuristic element.  I found myself entranced, I have always believed in the magic of life, of the random, of the small, seemingly ineffectual things, and here I saw parts of that feeling captured.  Most of the photographs were mundane snapshots into stranger’s lives, for example, a photograph of a woman, looking and walking away, half obstructed by an out of focus tree.  Or a picture of a man simply fishing.  I found myself questioning, curious, as to whether or not these scenes were constructed or directed, but the question concurrently seemed rhetoric; somehow I absolutely knew they were not.  It’s strange how you can look at a photograph and tell whether the subject is conscious his or her  picture is being taken or not, even if only by their posture. 

Interestingly, the piece that struck me most was the only one devoid of people.  I wonder if this says something about me?  Anyhow, the photograph (which can be seen below), is titled, “Pile,” and is basically, well, a pile of of waste.  This photograph struck me for two reasons, the first being that my first thought upon seeing it was, “there will never be a painting as beautiful as this.”  I don’t now agree with that statement, but that’s what I thought at the time.  My second realization was that if I had seen this scene in real life, I most likely would have been disgusted by it, or at least felt impartial.  Essentially, Waddell has succeeded in forcing me to look at something in a completely different way.  

It is fascinating to me how the photograph of something, or rather, the representation, irregardless of medium (film, literature, whatever), somehow transfers purpose, meaning, to it’s subject.  Even me, just writing this review here, rather than telling you how I felt face to face, seems somehow more poignant.  Something always seems inevitably lost in the articulation, but at the same time found, and I think that is one of the things that intrigues me most about art.  There is something about the translation of reality, that almost insubstantial place, that seems so insurmountably far removed – and because it is far removed, that much more profound.  Perhaps that is what grabbed me most about Waddell’s photographs – he has captured the everyday and removed it from the everyday, giving frame to the mundane.

“Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.” Samuel Butler