Ben Partridge

     
Ben Partridge
Aberystwyth University, School of Art

btp8@aber.ac.uk
benpartridge.wordpress.com


Biography

Ben Partridge is a postgraduate Art and Art History Student at Aberystwyth University and a director of Aberystwyth Printmakers.His practice encompasses print, photography and film, with particular interest in the relation between digital and analogue practice and the value of notions such as nostalgia, ownership and photographic realism. His work has been exhibited and screened both nationally and internationally. His short film ‘Where’s Ruth?’ was shown as part of the Rushes Short film festival 2012 in the ICA London.

Illustrated Talk

Motion/Picture
To work with found footage is to be surrounded by ghosts. Analogue film as an object holds within it the shadows and memories of the past and, if you have the means to unlock them, those spectres can be brought back to life through the flicker of light and movement, crossing the boundary between object and image. 



By utilising found photographs and analogue film footage my practice aims to consider the value of concepts such as nostalgia, ownership, photographic truth and realism. Crossing the borders of print, photography and film I operate within the liminal spaces between the static and moving image; the past and the present, analogue and digital process. 



This can be explored not only thorough the established president of incorporating photographic material into printmaking, but by establishing a more reciprocal relationship, combining the visual vocabulary of printmaking – mark making with drypoint, acid and touché – with the physical substance of film.

The various histories of print, photography and film are in a continuous state of flux, being constantly written and re-written. They may well come to share not only elements of their past but also their future. My work aims to promote discourse around the future of analogue processes in an increasingly digital world.