::
Struggle :: May
2006
Winner
Author: Israel
Aubert
Title: Fragile Earth
Medium: Digitally
Photograph
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click
the winning image to enlarge |
Brief
Bio: Born in Guadalajara México
in the 14th day of february 1978, Israel Aubert
is a writer and filmmaker of TV ads, video
clips and movies. Israel has
produced two films and 2 comics and is very
much part of the creative community of his
city.
AbleStable Listing: Ente
Films
Review: Israel
Aubert has
created a poetic image of a small plaster
bridging the gap between the deep cracks
of the parched earth. The jet black oil-drips
and globs threaten the boarders of the
image as the sun shines strongly on the
deeply textured surface of the land - a
map of our times.
We
look upon the lifeless scene of rock and dust.
A tiny blue, earth-like drop of liquid is sure
to be swallowed dry, then disappear from view
as the double threads of wire twist like some
desiccated strangled serpent peering over the
edge of a precipice. Look more and it seems the
plaster is yet to be used.
What
appears at first like a simple image, grows with
each viewing into an eloquent metaphor on the
current state of our fragile earth. The lack
of green or vibrant colours emphasise the stark
message. The plaster, a symbol of our inadequate
actions to address the impending environmental
catastrophe. The scorched earth, enveloped by
the darkness of our doing. This is a scene of
devastation. A warning shot across the bows of
our ship as it sails onward toward the stormy
seas of our future survival.
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Highly Commended
Author: Craig
Griffin
Title: Imagination & Reality
Medium: Digital
Photograph
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click
the image to enlarge |
Brief Bio: Craig’s work documents
his travels around Germany in search of the
mythical sublime, the quasi-religious experience
of the limitless immensity in nature and abstraction,
espoused by the Romantic landscape painter
Casper David Friedrich. Craig finds a compromise
between the idyllic notions of landscape that
has historically dwarfed the observer, and
the chaotic man-made world which encroaches
dramatically on these wilderness areas. Craig’s
innovative combination of architecture, calligraphy,
graphics and illustration, and his use of a
variety of media to visualize analogous themes
such as ruin and the fragmentation of memory
in the context of the sublime, echo the interdisciplinary
and claustrophobic nature of art in the modern
world.
AbleStable Listing: Craig
Griffin
Review: Craig's digital photograph, Imagination & Reality, has
a ghostlike quality. The gray mist envelops, the leafless trees, the
cold landscape. It is like a glimpse into an unwelcome future.
What
seems to be a river, flows to the right, a frost
covered path to the left zigs and zags towards
a vanishing point that all but disappears until
the dull shadow of a great steam train almost
comes to view.
In
the foreground petrified half seen shadows lurk
like the lost inhabitants of a long since forgotten
world.
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