Richard Owen's practice embraces still and moving photography.
His work explores the problems and complexities of the human condition through personal/cultural relationships and conceived notions of identity, sexuality and gender. He aims to focus on moments in isolation outside of the 'event' or narrative. In shifting the weight of an image to after the event he allows us to examine the moment. The pause before or after the moment is heavy with potential attempting to disrupt the viewer's engagement with the narrative.
Owen’s work focuses on details and fragments of things that happen as asides or that exist on the periphery of an event. The installation at g39 is filled with a sense of something about to happen with the viewer held in extended pauses between images of an unmade bed in a sun-filled room. The large-scale projected image comes and goes occasionally leaving the viewer in darkness and expectation. This poignant image is accompanied by a lyrical piece of text entitled Things gone and things still here. Owen states:
‘I see my work as focusing on moments other than ‘the event’. I am interested in the end of narratives / dialogues, pauses, periods of rest and hesitation (possible resignation). By focusing on details and fragments that may disturb, puzzle or trigger recognition I attempt to disrupt the viewers’ engagement with the narrative. In my artwork two processes predominate: the juxtaposition of disparate images and texts, both found and personal, resulting in a poetic accident (ambiguously decipherable) and the attempt to restage found imagery which inevitably becomes something new (and more interesting). A central aspect to my practice is to maintain a balance between intention and accident. I believe in the importance of imagination.’
Originally from Llanharan, Richard Owen is currently living and working in London and continuing to make his own work.