Loving a Disappearing Image: Ashley Thomas

Thomas’ works are a personal archive of relics. This archive recognizes the vernacular and everyday domestic subject matter linked to individual memories. It is an archive that indexes traces of the feminine in material culture. Her drawings and collage work acknowledge aspects of femininity that are often considered sentimental or banal and aim to give such cultural detritus the permanency that it lacks as source material.

Laura U. Marks writes in reference to Barthes, “To love a disappearing image one must trust that the image is real in the first place; that is, that it establishes an indexical link between the long-ago and objects recorded by a camera and the present-day spectator. We mourn the passing of the young lovers/actors because we are sure that they existed: the photograph is a sort of umbilical cord between the thing photographed then
and our gaze now.”

Opening Reception: Friday, February 26, 7-10 pm
Exhibition: February 26 – March 19, 2016
Gallery Hours: Saturdays and Wednesdays 12-5pm or by appointment