ODI's Data as Culture Programme
The series The Longest and Darkest of Recollections considers notions of time, memory and the construction of knowledge. Alongside photographs, playfully exploring the methods used by geologists searching for evidence in the ‘deep time’ of rock formations, is a text directed to the artist’s ageing father in the light of his fading memory.
The work is informed by Orton’s visual research into the practices and gestures of touch and measurement used by geologists. It fuses scientific and sensual knowledge with other more personal systems of understanding, while subtly questioning the role of photography as fixed evidence. It speaks of an ongoing curiosity about geological history, and obsessions with systematising and categorising time and the earth.
Courtesy of the artist. Developed as part of the MEAD Fellowship at the University of Arts London.
11 C-type and paper photographs mounted on variable materials; stones; text. Dimensions variable
The New Observatory
June 2017 – October 2017 at FACT, Liverpool
Anecdata, Biological, Environmental, Identifiable, Personal, Retrieved
Liz Orton is a visual artist working with photography, text and film to explore the relationship between images, knowledge and authorship. Her work engages widely with archives, both real and imagined, to explore the tensions between…
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