David Penny’s Residency exhibition at Snehta features textural aspects, digitally rendered spaces, and projected animation, to create an installation that connects different historical and contemporary weather events.

During a visit to Athens in 2018, Penny became fascinated with the archaeological site of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, and specifically the fallen column, blown over by a storm in 1852. The marble blocks, lying beside one another, operate like a photograph - their position and image perform as a record, tracing the event of the long since passed storm. The subject here is the wind, an intangible force beyond direct visual representation. The timing of Penny’s visit to the Temple coincided with the day of the wildfires that swept through the village of Mati to the east of Athens and more than one hundred people lost their lives. The animation Pentelic Scarves was made in memory of that day, modelled from a photograph taken of a tourist display - stand of silk scarves, caught amidst the rising winds. The object resides within an ominous lilac tinged space, referencing the skies in Athens; sunlight obscured through the smoke and fires a short distance away. Penny presents also the cyclamen, a Mediterranean flower that emerges as the temperature falls, on the slopes of Pentelicus , as another object influenced by the extreme weather conditions since this species is at high risk of extinction due to the global climate change and conditions caused by heatwaves and wildfires.

These three different subjects are divided in groups of images captured recently at the Temple, in Mati and on Mount Penteli. Digital manipulation and the layering of 3D scans that Penny made in each location, detach the descriptive qualities of his source images from their usual fate, enabling them to become more speculative in character. Through the form of its ambiguous images, this multifaceted exhibition is charged with the prospect of an uncertain future.

David Penny is an artistfrom Manchester, UK. Often working with objects through moving image, sculpture and digital imaging, he positions photography as a non-representational practice, considering his images through a framework of fictioning to undermine photography’s stance as a picturing ofthe real. Recent Exhibitions include 'Remote Work' - Grundy Gallery, Blackpool; 'Screen for Another Focus’ - Dovecot Gallery, Edinburgh; ‘A Quality of Distance’ - METAL, Liverpool; 'Spatial Correspondences' - RAUMX, London. He is Senior Lecturer and programme leader in Photography at SODA,the School of Digital Arts, MMU. www.davidpenny.info

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