Overview of Bhamra’s Work – My interpretation
Bhamra’s work, in her own words, explores the ‘terrain of the subconscious mind’ with images that provide a surreal aesthetic. Some of her work involves portraits of people and plastic as a way to highlight climate change and environmental damage caused by humans. Her landscape images (which I will now mainly be referring to) provoke similar themes and ideas to her portraits, however, they incorporate the idea of imagination to not only allow surreal and almost alien landscapes, but also promote a change in the way mankind treats nature by inviting people to ‘create a new environment for ourselves… which will then reflect in our outer world’. Her images incorporate an unusual colour scheme which adheres to her description of an imaginative world and gives them an artificial tone. Perhaps the reason she uses colour like this is to show that the artificial/unnatural nature of mankind’s creations is directly damaging nature.
While these landscapes are likely not a result of using coloured lighting (which would also link to the idea of the artificial landscapes she portrays), the images are still close enough to reality to perhaps create a feel of urgency in the landscapes she creates. To further this, the main parts of the images that have had their colours altered are the natural parts, such as grass, leaves, trees, bushes, etc…
Moodboard of their work:
Image Analysis
I think it is interesting that the focal point of this image is the orange path (or water) on the bottom right of the image, as not only does it lead the viewer up the image into the darker trees and other plants, but it also represents a man-made part of the landscape (assuming that it is a path and not a stream). The image has some contrast between the darker tree trunks and the lighter oranges, yellows and blues. To me this represents the ‘dream’ like part of the landscape, however the vibrancy of the oranges itself could represent the artificiality of man-made substances. This image does not include any hard/straight lines at all, due to the landscape itself being a natural one. It seems like the depth of field is fairly shallow in this image, as the large tree on the left seems to be more in-focus than the trees behind it.
This image is from Bhamra’s project called ‘A Surreal Landscape’, which, as I mentioned above, is a way for Bhamra to shine a light on climate change and environmental damage caused by mankind. The unnatural colours on this image represents this damage by making the landscape itself seem man-made, depicting ‘elusive imagery of dreams’ in order to correct it.
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