‘Family affair volume 1’ by Reney Warrington
by Lerato Shadi

A shot of a pool filled with green algae-infected water. The corner of a window, isolated and motionless. A crack on the pavement emerging from and leading to nothingness. Reney Warrington’s photographs are a series of moments in time captured and suspended in space.

The photographs reveal the trail and residue of a family’s time together, demonstrating Warrington’s assured command of the photographic medium. In some of her images, she skilfully blurs the foreground and background, leaving relevant detail in sharp clarity. Although the majority of the works are blurred, looking at them does not leave the viewer with a wish to somehow adjust the image.

Instead, the blurring effects produce hauntingly beautiful photographs, which exude a dream-like quality that is meditatively magnetic and invites a closer look. Warrington expertly leads the eye of the viewer to the photograph’s subject, be it the slight edge of a garden table that runs across the picture plain, a cracked pavement lined with autumn leaves or a neglected toy in the corner of an overgrown garden. These images are hauntingly silent and the blurred effect presents an enhanced sense of neglect and nostalgia.

Warrington’s photographs conjure up nostalgic images of a happier past contrasted against a neglected family home. The show’s title ‘Family affairs volume 1’ suggests the presence of a family. The prints themselves are void of any type of conventional family representation, offering a palpable absence of an adult, and a palpable presence of a child. The dream-like quality of the images evokes the past and sings a requiem for a child in a family.

There is a strong theme of restriction in these works. The proliferation of corners emphasises this, promoting a powerful sense of inaccessibility.

ARTTHROB, ISSUE NO. 95, JULY 2005