Exhibition
The natural world is all around us and ever-present, but rarely are we able to examine its intricacies and wondrous designs up close. Working in collaboration with the National Trust and the National Gallery, collective duo David Hartwell and Bill Ferehawk created a series of ten photographs in the summer of 2019 to showcase the native flora of the Cayman Islands. Utilising the transformative power of the camera’s lens, Hartwell and Ferehawk capture the elegance of these beguiling specimens with a visual and compositional economy that is alternately striking and understated in equal measure. Through a laborious process developed over several years, the artists have honed a technique of shooting their subjects on location — in this instance at the Queen Elizabeth II Botanic Park in Grand Cayman — utilising a portable background and two lightweight LED panels to achieve an astonishing array of optical effects. Drawing out the stark beauty of the thorny shake hand, the alien-like tendrils of the ghost orchid, and the raw bones’ delicately trembling stamens, the photographers have fashioned a series of plant ‘portraits’ that speak to the uniqueness and individuality of each in turn, while also revealing their wider significance within Caymanian culture.
ARTISTS’ STATEMENT
David Hartwell and Bill Ferehawk both live in Los Angeles and work as commercial artists in the film industry. As fine artists working together, they are known as Collective Artist Collective. Over the past decade, the artists have created numerous pieces and installations, each collaboration part of an ongoing investigation into the ways places and histories are marked and remembered. Homegrown continues their multi-year conversation about place through a series of large photographic portraits of native and endemic plants of the Cayman Islands. In the artists’ own words:
“Plants are powerful visual markers of a place and a culture. Our interest is in elaborating this connection, drawing upon a long tradition of botanical paintings and photographic images of plants, both from the Cayman Islands and by international photographers, such as Imogen Cunningham, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Edward Weston. Photography is the choreography of known quantities, whose limitations and predictabilities are finely orchestrated, resulting in a representation that never was. The photograph becomes an imperfect witness to events that never truly happened as depicted, but for one exception: in the photographer’s mind. As such, the photographs in this series are idiosyncratic visual investigations of the specific plants we encountered. The images magnify our gaze of these plants, first through the instrument of the camera and lens, but also through the complex manipulation of their production and post-production process. The portraits of Homegrown are as much a portrayal of the artist’s conversation about plants of the Cayman Islands as they are a record of the subjects taken.”
– David Hartwell and Bill Ferehawk
A project of the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands and the National Trust for the Cayman Islands
Featured Artists
naming the house a National Landmark in 2017, Palm Springs Art Museum. In 2019, Louis Poulsen Los Angeles, animator, Yale School of Architecture, Museum of Finnish Architecture, Museum of Modern Art, National Endowments for the Arts, Berkeley, National Endowment for the Humanities State Councils. He received degrees from University of California, Walker Art Center, History Channel, Discovery, Disney, Rotterdam Architecture Biennale. His work has received grants from the Graham Foundation, WUHO Gallery, WUHO Gallery, Neutra VDL House, motion graphics artist. He was formally trained as a photographer. He specialises in the visualisation of technical historical content for the likes of IBM, Beijing. David his wife Sarah managed the Richard Neutra VDL Studio Residences historical building in Los Angeles from 2007 to 2020. Their restoration work on the building gardens was recognised by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Microsoft, Wende Museum, he visited the Cayman Islands for business. His films art installations have shown all over the world including the Whitney Museum, PBS. He obtained his BFA from Art Center College of Design (Europe). His photography artwork have shown at the Wende Museum, National Building Museum, National Art Museum Norway, is co-founder of Radiant Features in Los Angeles. David Hartwell is a Los Angeles based photographer, Neutra VDL Studio Residences, David’s plant photography was displayed at the National Museum of China during the 5th International Art Science Symposium Exhibition (TASIES 2019) organised by Tsinghua University, and Bill Ferehawk is a Los Angeles based artist filmmaker. For three years.