Visual Arts — March 6, 2013 16:04 — 0 Comments

Kelly Nutley

We are followed in life by memory.  It’s the bags we travel with.  Good or bad we label and tag them, attach them to our path and drag them with us as we walk, trudge, stroll and fly through life.  We depend on these carefully packaged items to form a picture of ourselves.  But, what if this precious cargo was lost, not by intent but by the airlines of neurons that we depend on to ship, carry and move us to our connecting flights, forced by time and age.

Kelly’s work is almost overtly subjective.  It is like the ambience of emotion and experience.  It is like walking into a room and knowing that the person you have been searching for has left, just moments before you arrived.  Her work has a clear sense of travel and the hypnotic feeling of familiarity.

Upon first viewing I was drawn in but struggled to find a way to write about Kelly’s work because, as I soon realized, I was trying to describe the sensation in between present and past.  Like, a drop of water hitting your neck as you walk past the smell of a door ajar, and the quick shuffle of your mind recalling time and a memory that left a mark.  The struggle felt redundant.  So I encourage you, the viewer, to watch her video, view her photos and read her artist statement.  Kelly’s work has evolved from a unique ability to describe a universal experience and ultimately, the ability to see the internal landscape of self.

-Visual Arts Editor, Liz McDonald

Pioneer from Kelly Nulty on Vimeo.

 

 

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Pioneer – Projection display from Kelly Nulty on Vimeo.

Bio:

Kelly Nulty
Artist Statement

Our memories are the foundation of who we are today. From each day that passes and makes its way into the archives of our mind, we build upon every memory to create the present. My photography uses obscurity and disjointed perspective to achieve the foggy version of reality, which I experience. After suffering from an illness as a child, my memory was altered forever. Each year that goes by means another year of my past is lost from my long-term memory. I am unable to recall any friends from my childhood and now that many years have gone by since my father's passing I cannot remember him beyond family photos or stories told about him. I live in a constant state of uncertainty wondering if the memories I have are built in a reality that may be soon forgotten and a fantasy I create in the stead of those lost memories.

As the years tick by, my artwork has taken on a dream-like quality, a fantasy driven motif. Within my artwork, reality is subjective. Deep within my mind exist infinite worlds to explore and document; my photography allows me to share these escapades. My work invokes a feeling of wonder and enchantment within the viewer, leaving them eager to jump into the picture plane and wander away into the scenes before them. Entire worlds and universes can exist within a few inches of space before us. Soft focus and unnatural light play an integral part in my work as these aspects allow for an easier understanding of fiction in the photographs. The slightly blurred image is a faded memory, almost retrievable, dulled by the years. Creating all of my scenes allows me to control the present before my camera makes it the past.

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The answer isn't poetry, but rather language

- Richard Kenney