Annette Kelm at Vox

To put it mildly, still life photography is having a bit of a moment. Among its more compelling recent proponents is the German photographer Annette Kelm, whose work is currently exhibiting at Vox. Her images are a subtle and curious mixture of contrary aesthetics. While always based in conceptual photography, her subject matter and style are heterogeneous in nature, across her practice as a whole and sometimes within individual works themselves. With meticulous care and rigour, the work casually encompasses diverging qualities – from the personal to the clinical to the political, from slickly finished to DIY, from simple imagery to complex references.



Annette Kelm, Untitled (Tulpe, Magnets), 2013, C-print

Take the second room in the exhibition as an example: a series of photographs capturing fields of sunflowers appear like landscape stock photography in comparison to the carefully composed Untitled (Tulips, Magnets) with its swooning tulips and horseshoe magnets set upon a stripe-patterned background. Conversely, a photograph of iron filings has the abstract air of a Henri Michaux painting and a pair of pink children’s overalls is documented laying flat on a stark white backdrop. These photographs are each embedded with codes and references. I might have the knowledge to understand a few of them, but definitely not the majority, and it doesn’t really matter if I do or if I don’t. The starkly constructed imagery is captivating in and of itself, let alone for what it hints toward, and together the works create a slippery, fragmented narrative of cultural exploration and critique.

At its best, the strategy of still-life goes beyond passive “design eye” composition into the subversive. As witnessed in Kelm’s practice, destabilized quotidian subject matter can reveal and conceal complex issues in its wake.


Vox Centre de l’image contemporaine: http://www.centrevox.ca/en/
Annette Kelm continues until June 25.


Susannah Wesley is an artist and curator living in Montreal. She has been a member of the collaborative duo Leisure since 2004 and from 1997-2000 was part of the notorious British art collective the Leeds13. Formerly Director at Battat Contemporary in Montreal, she holds an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and an MA in Art History from Concordia University. She is Akimblog's Montreal correspondent and can be followed @susannahwesley1 on Twitter.