Arousal of Emptiness

On the work of Caryline Boreham

Essay by Dina Jezdic for the Big Idea, 29 Jun 2020

The lockdown experience showed us there is beauty in spaces that are meant to be occupied being empty. Caryline Boreham's been focussed on this for years.

There is a perfect formal symmetry captured in the Mt Roskill school hall. The superimposition of the indoor sporting markings matched according to the rules of perspective taking our gaze to the stage. A smartly positioned lectern to the right and a perfect line-up of green stackable chairs implies the context of a school assembly. But there are no students or teachers in sight and how the narrative unfolds is not clear. There is no movement in this image, just a prevailing warmth of the well-lit wooden interior seized by a photograph.

Caryline Boreham is a master of repeated gesture, capturing the world sealed off from our presence, revealed out of its anonymity. The gesture of emptiness and capturing the missing is also one of place and time, shot in an instant.

There is no bustle in these images and the emptiness is ever so pleasing for the witness because of these effects. There is a difference between what we are watching and what we see. These images are refusing to allow us the timeline of everyday experiences, what they capture is the outline, a penumbra of the human narrative.

Read the full essay on The Big Idea here