Birdsong

Foley Gallery is pleased to present Birdsong, a solo exhibition featuring new luminogram photographs by Mike Jackson.  This will be the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery and in the United States.

Jackson began exploring silver gelatin paper as a medium, and soon realized it could be much more than the final step of producing an image from film onto paper. In Birdsong, Jackson experiences, then responds to a thing. Jackson then makes marks on paper that trigger that same response. The marks represent the response, not the thing.

While working in the darkroom, Jackson began to feel envious of painter’s studios; wide open windows with light streaming in. With the darkroom you cannot make pieces directly from life - as you sit in a dull red glow. Jackson then realized he could hear birdsong - even though light could not come into the darkroom, sound could. 

The work is created ‘live’ rather than from a memory – Jackson places the marks on paper as he listens to the song. the darkroom’s lack of light, much like an isolation tank, allowed Jackson to notice a form of sensory input that he had beforehand taken completely for granted. Each luminogram is a one off unique piece.

The pieces made from birdsong changed as the seasons changed, with winter being quite solitary and quiet, to Spring and Summer being a cacophony of noise and input that spreads around the paper in massive swoops.