A-Z: A Bouquet From a Distance explores how reductive image-making can be used to convey what Walter Benjamin describes as the ‘aura’ of an object, rather than the object itself. Through a series of simple pastel drawings, translating a still life of a bouquet onto a series of grids that sequentially increase in density (and thus resolution) this project considers how meaning can be derived from these abstractions, based on the individual subjectivity and situated knowledges of the viewer. Drawings are intended to be suggestive and not prescriptive, each paired with a single word to further suggest a possible connotation, feeling or meaning that can be derived from the pairing. In reference to Ursula Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, this exercise in an enquiry into beginning to form form the ‘shape’ of meaning, eventually leading to understanding itself.
