‘The African Series’ edited montage. All enquiries via the artist Landing Page | Bodhi Del Mar
Currently living and working on the Gold Coast, Australia, artist Bodhi Del Mar is a photographer and visual artist who creates worlds through the amalgamation of mediums and story.
The artist’s creative tenacity has seen her practice expand to include various techniques and modalities including, photography and digital art, sculpture, and painting. It is her relentless desire to make the surreal realms she envisions manifest that drives her quest for new knowledge and skill. Describing herself as “a perpetual emerging artist” not wanting to stagnate or arrive anywhere, Del Mar is in constant cyclical metamorphosis. She has deep affinity with the self-actualisation available in creative process and as such largely divorces herself from the outcome of her artworks focusing instead on how to get there.
Del Mar’s former life as a commercial photographer has gifted her with keen observation. It is clear the artist has high engagement with visual imagery, both internally and externally and her ability to execute meticulous detail and precision of those projections is impressive. It is this accuracy and intimate immersion in the stories she tells through her work that leave her audience intrigued. When connecting with her Africa Series the paradoxical nature of the human experience is pervasive. These works defy logic, instead leaving the viewer with remnant feelings absent of reason. The series is visually striking with aesthetic merit, submitting to the core principles of balance, continuity, symmetry, gradient and uniformity through Del Mar’s unique and compelling marriage of digital imagery and painted expressionism. It is this profound connection with aesthetics and adept practice with various mediums that will solidify the foundation of her oeuvre moving forward and provide the foundation for the artist to evolve her voice from undefined and curious to unwavering and direct, as her creative intentions suggest.
Critique
Del Mar’s oeuvre is still developing so identifying key areas of narrative and stylistic maturation or future predictions around these attributes is limited. Her most recent Africa Series while surrealistic in genre, requires some exegesis, these pieces are visually pleasing and can be clearly described, it is the relational elements that require some dissemination, which is contrary to the artists clear and succinct persona. As a medium photography permits the practitioner a certain amount of visual and practical control that more manually executed mediums do not. However, the themes of nature, the human experience and personal psyche imbued in Del Mar’s work mandate some nuance and intimacy – for these stories (nature, the human experience and personal psyche) to be relatable to an audience, we need to see the mess.
While her body of work is still developing, it is acknowledged that Del Mar’s career as a visual artist is relatively new, therefore foray in different techniques and styles is expected. However, it seems the inconsistency throughout the portfolio is less about experimentation and more about a current metamorphasis of artistic voice. It is impossible to demonstrate an oeuvre that evolves if an artist is not developing naturally or authentically. Even if artistic growth is not linear it should show clear aesthetic connection and/or narrative cohesion.
Personal
The African Series of works is surreal. Surrealism challenges our reality due to its vague familiarity or bizarre possibility. The African series does have affect and this provocation would be appropriate if I felt that it was the artists intention to be provocative, but such provocation (even well executed as it is here) can keep audiences at arm’s-length. Surrealism by nature, requires some exegesis, as it is a cognitive genre that requires decision from the viewer – to either keenly analyse their experience or surrender to it. Our session revealed that connection is your current creative desire, not contention. This misalignment is felt in this work. A preoccupation with perfecting process might be preventing the embrace of mistakes – or creative opportunities – that allow audiences to see ‘the artsit’ and connect with her. This isn’t to say retaining obvious flaws in work is mandatory, but that they are worked with as they arise and perhaps they are used to lead to the exploration of directions that otherwise would not have been explored, ultimately leading you to an unplanned outcome (or an outcome that doesn’t replicate the original vision).
Beauty, the kind audiences, humans, seek, is not merely aesthetic, it is nuanced, raw and real, it is flawed, it tells stories.