Catherine Cloran Passaggio

Barometer Gallery 2018

The work in this exhibition was made during a three month sojourn in rural Italy in 2016. I wanted to experience the transition from Winter to Spring and had planned to walk through the countryside, immerse myself in it and take photos. I wanted to slow down but apparently, I also needed to break my foot in order to hasten the process! Confined to the passenger seat of a car instead, I started shooting through the side window.

I became interested in how the landscape was perceived while moving through it. The foreground rushed by faster than the background and seemed to shred into transparent sheets that overlaid the background like a strange kind of storm. It felt as though I were stationary and the landscape was rushing by. The more I looked, the more the foreground seemed to rip apart and disintegrate. Light, colour and form were tossed about, especially on rough roads. It became a very different and compelling reality. The results are images that are abstracted to varying degrees yet retain the light quality and the colours of the European spring.

The video is made up of about 200 still images, blurred by motion, which fade, one into the other, creating a continuous stream or flow.

I had gone to Italy to experience slow time and ended up making ‘fast’ images - images shot from a moving vehicle. Paradoxically though, the final work seems to create a certain stillness or meditative effect.