Maria and Jamie

Maria Hughes and Jamie Reid
Egg Space Gallery, 16-18 Newington
31st May - 18th June 2006

Reviewed by John Owen

Nature Takes the Prize
The compositional shots of all aspects of nature is a very themeless and unsystematic approach. That may annoy the purist, but these shots emit raw power in their tonal simplicity. Natural objects that say only what you see.
The beauty resplendent in our immediate environment, the patterns both intricate and simple, have figured in the work of artists from Turner to the French impressionists, but these spatial forms are the real McCoy. No abstraction, just as there is no need for artificial or digital reconstruction or to elevate them higher or lower. The photograph cannot convey smells or excitement; in a way this artificial eye - like the entomologists of the Victorian era - gasses and chloroforms life out of the subject or object d’art in order to render its beauty more apparent.

Visual Homicide
These however have an alternative randomness that gives you life - flora fauna and all sunsets, mother nature and our coexistence with her. If we only open our eyes to the beauty that is all around us (the trick is to look up from the pavement and seek out the green), life and colourful nature is a concrete orphan's therapy. Worth a visit for its whimsicality.