In her recent work Emily Wolfe turns her attention to the history and traditions of European landscape painting, more specifically those prints made after 17th and 18th century paintings by French artists Claude Lorrain and Claude-Joseph Vernet. Wolfe photocopies the prints in sections before cutting and reassembling them as paper collages, with the addition of other materials such as paper and masking tape. She then photographs and discards the collages, only then beginning the process of painting from the photographic image.
The paintings make reference to the process of recording archaeological excavations, something I became interested in after a period spent working on a variety of sites with the Museum of London Archaeology. The two processes of painting and excavating are connected in my mind. Each process involves layering and stratification and the consequent emergence of narratives.
Through this careful excavation Wolfe simultaneously disrupts and perpetuates the illusion of the image and the nature of its construction as a series of intersecting planes. Time and memory are collapsed. Positioned at the boundary between the painted world and the physical one, at the threshold between dream and reality, Wolfe leads us in ever-increasing circles, continuously looping back on ourselves.
