Then & now

In Clouded Over: Representations of Clouds in Art, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, UWA, the curator, Janice Baker, created a 400 year journey, illuminating approaches to the depiction of clouds and highlighting the continuity of traditions, as in Duxbury's re-imaging of John Constable's 1822 musings on Hampstead Heath represents the view on a particular date in 2002 and the other to an imaginary view which could have been seen by John Constable 180 years previously. Photography is often considered to capture reality through its objective, mechanical functions, however digital photography's opportunities for manipulation of images increasingly blur edges of subjective and objective realities. Constable's oil on paper cloud studies on Hampstead Heath inspired Duxbury to make Then & Now, a photographic diptych in which she analysed the sky and clouds as metaphors of change and represented the differences and similarities between 19th and 21st century representations 2 photographs, in one of which she had digitally removed the 21st century aircraft vapour trails to restore the sky to 19th century purity. Duxbury gave one of seven talks associated with the exhibition; Clouds 1822-2002, considering John Constable's love of clouds and his cloud paintings on Hampstead Heath, Then & Now was the subject of a paper Duxbury gave at Curtin University Palimpsests conference, published in 2005, 'Then and Now: Re-imagining the Present through a Creative Representation of the Past', in Palimpsests: Transforming Communities, Alex Gerbaz and Robyn Mayes (ed), Curtin University Press, Perth, pp45-54.