madeleineshepherd/ aliensurfaces/Wide/ Fine Art Prints ▼

This is not the usual science fiction art. There are no airbrushed spacecraft or warrior princesses in impractical armour here. The prints in this exhibition are inspired by surfaces described in works of science fiction and fantasy, some well-known classics and others that deserve to be so. The texts were chosen from my own reading and from suggestions made by Mike Calder of Transreal Fiction and number of other friends and acquaintances (thank you, you know who you are).

Starting from the selected texts and my archive of photographic material, the work distorts real images to create semi-abstract representations of the imaginary. Making these digital images is iterative – reading around the selected text, making a photographic image, returning to the text, letting it settle in my imagination, back to the computer to adjust the image. When I’m finally happy with a test print, the fina version is printed on watercolour paper, signed and mounted.

The alien surfaces which inspire this collection are not always extraterrestrial or even non-human in origin. Some are earthly but normally hidden from human awareness like Siloën in Read’s "The green child". Others are man-made but have become alien through abandonment and mythopeia as in Ballard’s "Hello America". The idea that the near and familiar can become alien is further reinforced by the fact that all the photographs on which this portfolio is based were taken within a few miles of my studio.

A set of original prints are on exhibtion at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2008 in Transreal Fiction bookshop. Unsigned, uneditioned copies are available from this online gallery.