Chloe Sells/Senescence, Michael Hoppen Gallery - exhibition review
The clichés surrounding still-life photography, with its flowers, fruit and vegetables on a table, sometimes alongside skulls and dead rabbits, still draw on 17th-century Spanish painters. But the genre is evolving radically and Chloe Sells is a leader. Its original description, nature morte (dead nature), still survives but she chooses objects including ancient pagan symbols and African carved heads and creates a cinematic stage-set scenario instead of scenes in Spanish dining rooms.
The effect of Sells’s shifting life experiences between London and Botswana is responsible for her explosive colour palette and scenes reflecting her personal journeys. Objects with exotic shapes and bright African hues light up gigantic flowers, seaweed fronds, feathers and fabrics, all meticulously arranged then photographed on large format negatives. Taken to London, the labour-intensive, hands-on work in her darkroom begins.
To create these distinctive images, Sells plays with lighting, layering and patterning onto each single unique negative. Colourful test-strips, usually discarded, are now finished works and create a collaged effect.
The sumptuous pieces are framed by these colour blocks. This is perfectly illustrated in Only After, where decadently abandoned food lies on a table intruded upon by the edges of folded paper. Olympia’s rich colours contrast with the Gothic voodoo atmosphere of Obstacles to Conquest built around an animal skull: stunning interpretations of still-life photography today.
Until August 31 (020 7352 3649, michaelhoppengallery.com)
