Something Blue is an installation by LeAnne Vincent that draws parallels between the mating patterns of the male satin bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus violaceus) and people who use online dating.
The male satin bowerbird is well known for its practice of building and decorating a bower to attract females. The bower acts as a ‘courtship arena’ during the breeding season, with the male birds collecting and decorating the platform with blue coloured objects.
In Something Blue LeAnne Vincent connects this practice of ritualised display to that of online dating, which relies on images of physical appearance. Through the installation’s proliferation of blue cyanotypes and video imagery, LeAnne Vincent asks: ‘What if, like the satin bowerbird, we use our belongings to attract a mate?’
Through this question, our everyday items, collections and sentimental memorabilia become symbols of our experience of the world, our identity, beliefs, and emotions. Each image and object can be used to spark conversation and investigate how we seek physical connection in an increasingly non-physical world.
LeAnne Vincent is a photo-based environmental artist. Her photography practice began with black and white film and working in the darkroom and has developed into a much broader practice including digital photography, photograms, cyanotype printing, and experimentation with pinhole, Lomography, video, and drones. In the last four years her practice has evolved, finding new ways to make images and express environmental concerns using textiles, threads, and new and pre-used fabrics.
Her work is engaged with the landscape and relies on experiences in nature and urban areas to investigate human behaviour, natural heritage, and collective memories and experiences within Anthropogenic biomes. Natural and urban environments provide unlimited stimuli, and her work is often informed by upheaval in these environments, destruction from the forces of nature or human interaction and habitation.
As her practice is process driven, walking, exploring, observing, and collecting objects are vital to informing her work. She regularly hikes in her local area, and further afield, to collect remnants of flora and fauna and discarded human-made objects on the ground. She photographs these objects in still life formations and mini assemblages as well as using them in making photograms on paper or fabric.
Image: LEANNE VINCENT, ‘SOMETHING BLUE’ (DETAIL), 2023, CYANOTYPE.
