Geoffrey H. Short
towards another (big bang) theory - the sublime, terror and allusion
"The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most
powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are
suspended, with some degree of horror”. (Edmund Burke, 1757)
The inherent mystery and ultimate inevitability of death makes it a staple subject of contemplation
in philosophy and in art. Risking death means both terror and excitement, and the eighteenth
century philosophers Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant suggested that whatever is terrifying
is also sublime. Many artists have explored the aesthetic qualities of terror and death, Damien
Hirst using dead animals, Joel-Peter Witkin and Andres Serrano using dead people to test the
boundaries of beauty, horror and acceptability. J.M.W. Turner's paintings of ships battling storms at
sea and Walter de Maria's Lightning Field explore the beauty of the lethal forces of nature, while
Cai Guo-Qiang and Sarah Pickering harness unnatural destructive forces in their explosion works.
Geoffrey H. Short's series towards another (big bang) theory is an exploration of risk, terror,
beauty and the sublime. Hiring film industry special effects technicians to create "big bangs" on
the black sands of New Zealand's west coast, and recruiting friends and colleagues to assist with
triggering multiple cameras, the risks, respectively, of physical injury and of missing the shot are
managed. The fuel explosion is part of the cinematic vocabulary of special effects and as such is a
simulation of an unnatural terror. (Notably, in these days of computer generated imagery, the best
way to simulate an explosion is still with an explosion). Fossil fuel (with all its geo-political
associations) mixed with gunpowder (with its own history of war, plots and dangerous
entertainment) makes for an unpredictable, dramatic and multi-layered imaging material. This work
is both an interrogation of that material, and an investigation into the differences between the live
experience of an explosion and the two dimensional representation of it as an aesthetic object. As
with all photographs, these are both illusion and allusion. The illusion is reinforced by the large
scale and fine detail of the photographs (up to 2.4 metres wide), and while they document actual,
staged explosion events, they allude to every explosion from the original big bang of creation to the
anxiously anticipated big bang of a terrorist bomb or nuclear disaster. The near absence of a
recognizable physical context in which the explosions occur emphasizes this referential quality,
allowing the viewer to imagine their own context, to supply their own narrative around these
isolated climactic moments.
Geoffrey H. Short is an artist and photographer living in Auckland, New Zealand. After studying at
the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in the 1980ʼs, he worked as a photographer
at the Waikato Museum in Hamilton, then at Real Pictures gallery and laboratory for the
camera arts in Auckland, initially as a lab technician, then as gallery manager. From 1990 he
freelanced as a commercial photographer, specializing in stills photography for film and television.
In 2008 he returned to Elam to complete his degree and the series entitled towards another (big
bang) theory formed part of his graduating presentation for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts
(Honours) in 2009. He graduated with first class honours and was awarded a Senior Prize in Fine
Arts. A selection of work from this series is included in the exhibition and book reGeneration2 –
tomorrow's photographers today produced by the Musée d l'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland and
touring internationally. He has also been nominated, along with 11 other reGeneration2 exhibitors,
for the Lacoste Elysée photography prize.
geoff@geoffreyhshort.com
P.O.Box 78050 Auckland 1245 New Zealand
www.geoffreyhshort.com