Off-Site Projects
Carsten Wirth
Using historical methods of painting to readdress
differing modes of image-making Carsten Wirth
questions the imagery prevalent in contemporary
media. Creating optical instruments as an experiential
means of engaging with the practices of seventeenth
century European painters’ use of the cameras
obscura, Wirth also employs materials and techniques
of that same time period in his paintings. Through
such practice and in contrast to most contemporary
painters of representational imagery Wirth avoids the
mediating use of photography; the paintings emerging
instead from thorough and direct encounters with
his subject matter. The process of making a painting
becomes inseparable from the image itself. As an
artist-in-residence leading up to this festival Wirth has
set up a studio in Dawson City to create paintings as a
study of the particular qualities of Dawson City’s light
as summer approaches. To do so Wirth has created
a portable version of the complex optical instruments
that he has, to date, used in his Berlin studio.
Andrew Wright
As a graduate student, Andrew Wright regularly
visited the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, just down
the River Thames from London, and the site of the
Observatory’s camera obscura. There he would take
pleasure in its table-top projection of the surrounding
landscape and the architecture of Greenwich. An image
familiar from historic images of Dawson’s goldrush days
is of banners stretched across the bustling streets.
Recalling these two moments, Wright’s Project features
two banners on the now quieter streets of Dawson
City. Playing into the complex histories of Dawson’s
settlement and Britain’s colonial past the banners will
feature Wright’s recollected image inside the camera
obscura and its “Charming Prospect.”
Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival