Lynne Roberts-Goodwin
"Lynne Roberts-Goodwin’s work is grounded in a deep concern for nature and humanity. Her strategic partnerships with industrial and scientific communities underpin photographic artworks relating to endangered species and their environments that transcend geographical representation.
The False Tales (1995) series comprises reappropriated and photographic domesticated animal images from history and contemporary urban society, Boris the Dog 2 conceptually investigates the field of nineteenth and twentieth century animal discourse. The working and reworking of fragments in False Tales raises important questions about how representations of animals have operated in constructions of nature and culture. Manipulation of animals was crucial to the reinvention of nature, seen again also in Roberts-Goodwin’s 2001 Bad Bird #5 Landings series, comprising over 80 images in total, of museum and field avian species. These large-scale studio and field photographic works evoke multiple and competing processes raising speculation of the animal as ‘Other’ to human.
The animal portrait and its relationship/resonance with the human body in the 2003 Azure series, positions a non-Western cultural context as both an agent of representational codes and as verifiable evidence. These works attempt to cast light and amplify the complex apprehension of the contemporary portrait through its representation in terms of the non-human gaze. Questions are raised regarding what animals signify, as evident in Azure Saqar #2, in relation to our own experience as spectator and subject of authenticity.
Roberts-Goodwin’s Disappearing Act 2005 and Random Acts 2007 series continue researching and imaging evocations of the ancient Frankincense trail through alignments and tracing of avian migration within trade routes. Frankincense Highway and Petrol Boy Yousef (Disappearing Act 2005) and Lost Sands #1 (Random Acts 2007) attempt to resurrect a relationship and interrogate the emblematic status of the animal and human body, within the resonance of site and migrating borderless cultures as contested codes of representation."
(Lynne Roberts-Goodwin 2007)
