63

Mariah Robertson’s imagination is fired by ‘alternative historical processes from photography’s shadowy beginnings with Victorian chemical hobbyists’. In the camera or in the darkroom, in black and white or in colour, Robertson happily ignores standard procedure and welcomes accident. Solarisations and photograms in the Man Ray mode, irregular chemical reactions, negative collage, and games with filters all add up to a gleeful alchemy of photographic process. In 63, a unique colour print on metallic paper, Robertson has created a gleaming abstraction that in its vivid chromatic spectra and prismatic, multifaceted form seems to embody the nature of light itself as photography’s primary ingredient. Drips and veils of developer fluid reveal a kaleidoscopic vision of crystalline rays that flash across the surface in shimmering cyan, magenta and yellow: these are the primary hues formed by dye couplers in colour negative development. For Robertson, her photographic art-experiments are all the more exciting for being unpredictable. ‘I [like] the unexpected parts, the parts that go beyond what I could have planned,’ she says. ‘Because the plans are kind of pedestrian. Planning happens in the frontal lobe, where you deal with logic and numbers. It’s very effective for getting things done. But if you execute something perfectly, you get something pretty boring.’