New work 🍳
Recent pictures and a brief studio update
“It’s been a while since I’ve reached out; hello.”
This is a refrain that’s become one of my most-repeated phrases over the last couple of months. After a difficult year, it seems like I’m finally beginning to emerge. I’ve missed you all.
A few friends and I have taken over a garage in central Albuquerque and I’m thrilled to say that new projects are already in process at the studio. Over the course of December I constructed chicken wire walls and learned how to build stairs while taking breaks to pick up whittling and to cruise down to El Paso for the gem and mineral show (see quartz cluster below).
I’ll have much more news soon, but for now I’ll just share an excerpt from my recently edited artist statement alongside a few new images. Reach out with any questions. Thanks for sticking with me, a new day still dawns.
XO
Delaney
P.S. Historically, I’ve shared Spotify playlists in my e-blasts, but Spotify sucks (sorry!) and so I’m recommending one of my favorite NTS radio shows, Reimagining Country w/Jamal Khadar instead
Throughout my training as a photographer, I have often felt myself wandering through the leaning shadows of abandoned methods of image-making, wondering whether beautiful pictures will survive as the pool fills up with lurid representations of “real life” in paper and pixels. In spite of the flood, photography’s relative newness as a tool in the history of representation is its most intriguing asset to me. As I explore the integration of original imagery with sculptural apparatuses, pictures transform from a stoic medium to a fluid material ripe with possibilities for re-invention. In the way that a cyborg is defined by an absolute enmeshment of man and machine, my practice is cyborgian in its disregard for material difference in its search for ideological synthesis.
This method of working is informed by my ongoing interest in the abstraction of blue-collar labor alongside relative inaccessibility of artistic labor. After becoming a full time art worker, my positionality as a dealer enabled me to act as a witness to the disparate realities of the collector and artist class. An emboldened embrace of “lowbrow” materials and heightened interest in photography’s relationship to craft emerged as I witnessed institutions fumble and my peers struggle under the gaze of those with the financial and social clout necessary to foster large collections. I became interested in materials and processes that defied traditional expectations of fine art photography, resulting in works that prioritize a sense of play and invention.
