Artist Statement

"I am attracted to transformation as a mechanical, biological and magical process.  One that can be as simple as a slight visual shift to one that can be as intense and elaborate as becoming something else entirely….a new entity.  Photography relates to this notion of transformation in an interesting way because it is always changing forms historically but also more immediately: The 3 dimensional reality is suspended as a latent or invisible image, which is then made 2 dimensional and visible but in negative form, which is then made positive…but will eventually decay.  
 
Through my own experiences with photography I have become fascinated with the performative aspect of actually shooting and creating an image.  The act of transforming the stuff of life for the camera, which will then document and transform it further.  In thinking about this I have constructed the climax of moments of chaos and intensity with the resulting photographs depicting an abstracted state of flux, serving as both the event and its aftermath.  The images allude to magic and myth while revealing the mechanics of trickery.  So we have the fictitious event-this sort of quasi natural upheaval, taking place in a space that reveals the artifice of the scenario.  But we also have the event of photography because the artifice is transparent enough for us to see it.  And then we have the aftermath of both the staged event and the act of photographing said event.  My hope is that in looking at the images one simultaneously experiences the performative nature of the presented scenarios as well as the very act of constructing and photographing them.
 
The images themselves can be read in succession as ruminations on the passage of time.  You have the event in all its stages, compressed into three panels, picturing succinctly the climax as well as the conclusion.  The event being a whirlwind of the stuff we recognize as debris and characteristics of chaos.  The figure acting as both the event’s source and the event’s victim.  And perhaps the face being the site of this drama, infallibly read as an indicator of time’s passage.  In it’s finality it remains only a whisp….a suspended figment amongst the props of an aftermath." (Cumming, 2009)

Artist Bio

Robyn Cumming is a Photo-based artist working in Toronto. She received a BFA from Ryerson University and an MFA from York University.  She currently teaches in the photography dept. at OCAD and in the Art and Art History joint program between U of T and Sheridan College.  Robyn has been described as, “the most deadpan funny artist using film since French director Jacques Tati” (Peter Goddard, Toronto Star), who has “an uncanny ability to conjure up entire short stories in a single image” (David Jager, Now Magazine).

Her work has been exhibited throughout Canada and in New York and Asia, and is reproduced in the art books “Fast Forward 2007” and “Carte Blanche”, published by Magenta Foundation.  Robyn’s work can be found in private collections worldwide as well as in public collections in Canada and Japan.  She was recently featured in a new series about Canadian photographers titled Snapshot on BRAVO.