Laurice Merleau Ponty Analysis

The jumping off point for this project came when I was reflecting on and reviewing my works and practices to date, trying to locate the question of what it is I wish to express. My work thus far has been interrelated and my voice as an artist is imbued within the corporeal and the formal qualities of the materials. My research and practice lie within the human condition, from the somatic to the many varied psychological landscapes we experience. I explore the question of what it means to be human and our understanding of ‘place’ within the world.

Maurice Merleau Ponty’s essay ‘Eye and Mind’ examines how art displays the act of viewing, extending from Martin Heidegger’s Being-in-the-world, ‘The Sense of Being’. Ponty examines the paradox

In his essay Mapping the Earth in Works of Art, Casey distinguishes four kinds of mapping. My interest lies in body mapping, which Casey poses, leaves behind the traditional conventions of cartography - where the artist’s body is not merely a tool but becomes itself a material for mapping. The body is the origin as a whole mass, as in we sense to make sense. The body is a moving counterpart to its surroundings and is already incorporated with the landscape as it senses it. The landscape is retraced into bodily motions, which leaves traces within the work rather than representing the exact contours it replaces. Casey continues to approach from a phenomenological view, focusing on nature and landscape, which I intend to explore

By photographing the reflective surfaces of puddles and stains, I can transfer the notion that how through my lens of the world, I am informed by the live phenomena of a lived moment; the photograph being the trace.

The relationship between theory and practice has led me to start researching trace and photography. The word trace has multiple meanings, and its specific application to discourse about the nature of photographs. The 2012 Macquarie Dictionary defines the word ‘trace’ to mean “a mark or a token, or evidence of the former presence, existence or an action of something; a vestige”. It may also refer to a fragment of something or an impression left behind.

It could be argued that painting and drawings are where artist’s hand depicts a metaphorical state or a future event, not fixed in a particular time. In contrast, trace is linked to a past event, and can be examined for information about events or a lived