Yas Crawford

THE MAPPING SERIES, A backbone for my visual art work and photography, a vehicle to embed the story. 

It has been my long-term plan to develop a series of images that reflect the art in science, to develop art and multidisciplinary collaborations, challenge the norm and provide a safe place to explore new research. This is where it all began for me, as a student geologist mapping the Sub-Alps close to Castellane and the Gorge du Verdon in the Haupte Provence region of France with a 35mm film Pentax camera.  The folding and gravity gliding structures of the La Batie Limestone mountains providing a vessel and metaphor for later research. Who would have known I would return to these images years later and the beginning of an investigation into photographic  'Mapping Projects'. 

MAPPING I-III. 'Mapping I-III' , The Biological, Geological and Evolution is a collection of images divided into series. There is cross-over, a connectedness that guides the visual experience. Explore the different areas and indulge in the relationship between art and science. 

Using a multidisciplinary collaborative approach combined with different photographic techniques I map biological and geological time. The collection experiments with layering, deconstruction and reconstruction. It tests boundaries both human and environmental and reflects on the affect of those distortions upon our well being. It reveals an intrinsic and subliminal feeling of how our internal and external worlds collide, just as art and cartography collide in map-making. 

ABSTRACTION & AMBIGUITY

Deconstruction permits abstraction, develops abstract thinking and a focus on the ambiguous, The Grey Space between disciplines. In turn the audience remains in control of both their conscious and subconscious thoughts and ideas, protected from any stigma or label they might otherwise feel associated with.