Simon Attwooll

Season’s Greetings but in July at Hutch gallery in Dunedin pulls from a collection of found photographs of Christmas trees in domestic interiors. In Aotearoa New Zealand, many Christmas traditions remain inherited from Europe. Winter iconography and in particular the Christmas tree is tied to a season geographically opposite to our own. These signs and symbols are repeated each year despite existing out of sync with the Southern Hemisphere’s climate and lived reality where the familiarity of these traditions often overrides their absurdity.

Season’s Greetings but in July presents 15 shades of Christmas, a suite of works produced through variations of red and green, colours synonymous with both photographic reproduction and Christmas iconography. Each work is framed in a distorted candy cane style which simultaneously works with the image aligning to parts of it but also clashes against it. Some works are oriented according to a New Zealand perspective (the “right” way up), while others adopt a European orientation but viewed from New Zealand as they are flipped and appear upside down. If you choose to own one, each comes with the ability to hang it to your preference. In a humourous way orientation is used in a geographic and ideological sense, a question of which cultural position is treated as “correct” by default. Perhaps turning something on its head at first appears confusing visually but helps to encourage the viewer to re think about what they are seeing/participating in from another perspective. Remaking these photographs through screen printing, I am thinking about these manufactured systems which mirror the way traditions themselves are mechanically inherited and reproduced.

This series draws from ideas in contemporary photography’s longstanding interest in repetition, vernacular imagery and the unstable relationship between image and reality. These particular found domestic photographs of stranger’s Christmas trees operate simultaneously as document and performed fantasy. These images are less about individual memory than collective rehearsal, rehearsals of inherited family tradition derived from the oddity and superficiality of public models of a kind of meaningless, fantasy decoration. Reproduction processes in photography and printmaking through repetition and the way an image translates in different forms mirror the way traditions themselves are mechanically passed on.

In my work A never ending present I have “presented” (mind the pun) a decorated Christmas tree and beneath it an open ended print edition in the form of screen printed Christmas presents. The wrapping paper is a remade design taken from a used piece of wrapping paper I overpaid from Ebay perhaps from a pre digital era where it had been screen printed originally. As some families save and reuse wrapping paper I have also attempted to mimic this tradition, re photographing and re making this paper only restricted in the time to do it but not restricting it through a numbered edition. The open edition “presents” are separated and printed in red, green and blue referencing RGB digital displays, how we view images online and how I originally found this material. Being processed back and forth digitally and mechanically I am also interested in how the image breaks down and becomes more difficult to define whether these fault’s and failures are digital or human error.

Inside each “present” is a lump of coal referencing the myth that Santa will only leave you coal instead of presents if you’re naughty. “A never ending present” is less about what the actual present may be but more about the addictive chase, like a materialistic junkie, of getting stuff, of consuming images and where to find the next one. The reward in this case doesn’t come from opening it. It’s just about attaining it. “The never ending present” is also code for how I/we most commonly interact with photography doom scrolling and devouring images at speed online and how quickly these images are at once beautifully presented to us, consumed then dismissed. It’s about holding us in this present state, no past, no future, just now, being fed as much as we can consume to keep us.

Running beneath the exhibition is an interest in the smoke and mirrors of cultural production, the construction of illusion and staged realities. Christmas and the art world both rely heavily on performance and collective belief. Galleries, art fairs and artists often participate in forms of make-believe, carefully constructing fantasies of value, success, exclusivity or extraordinary lives. Season’s Greetings but in July aligns Christmas decoration, photographic representation and the contemporary art economy as interconnected systems of display.

You can view Simon’s available work here