11/10/14 - 'Dalston Anatomy' by Lorenzo Vitturi

Hairy orange, yellow balloons and rotten camote #2 - Lorenzo Vitturi 

Before my shift helping out and working at the Royal Academy of Arts, I took the time to hang around The Photographer's Gallery and see the exhibitions up. I first saw 'Dalston Anatomy', a series of photographs of structures Vitturi created made from things he'd found at Dalston's Ridley Road Market back when the exhibition first opened. After seeing it on the contextual studies sheet, I decided to revisit to refresh my memory.

I've always been interested in concepts such as this. My favourite kind of art is art with meaning, as ridiculous and pretentious as it sounds. Art that can illicit questions are my favourite. What's more enjoyable than having an internal debate over something in front of you? There's no right or wrong, only your opinion and what you yourself take away from the image in front of you. 

Dalston Anatomy, for me, combines the idea of ephemeral objects that will soon disappear or decay with the vibrancy of a market that can often be missed. Through the use of the found materials, Vitturi was able to create new sculptures that were often either left to rot or had pigment thrown at it. The ones with pigment are the most interesting to me. Whilst the pigment sometimes only accentuates the objects, often it also changes the subject of the photograph, morphing it into something else or obscuring it completely. My favorite photograph was of what I believe is a some sort of animal organ that has been covered in a lush green pigment. The object used is now completely changed. It's no longer a sort sight for eyes. Instead, it's transformed into something beautiful and pleasing to look at. 

What's more is that I can see the vibrancy of the colors acting as a means of preserving these ephemeral objects. As a lot of the sculptures photographed are either decaying matter or foods that will decay soon after being photographed, there is a real emphasis in my mind on the purpose of the pigment other than to create striking images. The use of pigments and other means to conceal the faces on portraits could also mean many things. On one hand, I thought it could be talking about the fact that without the color or concealment, many shoppers at the market would look and interact with the market stall sellers but never really remember them nor care even. Covering the identities of those sellers creates an air of curiosity- and people start to wonder who they are and what they're like. On the other hand however, the pigment could have simply been used to protect the identities of those Vitturi photographed.

I won't review the exhibition as a whole as I will probably mention my thoughts and opinions on the show in my contextual studies essay but Dalston Anatomy was an interesting exhibition to go to. The questions I had when I first visited were still there the second time I went and on my most recent visit, I actually found that I had a few ideas and answers to my initial questions.