Liss Platt: a CONSTANT decade, at McMaster Museum of Art

Liss Platt, Associate Professor in Communication Studies and Multimedia, is exhibiting at the McMaster Museum of Art. Her body of work is a “retrospective” photographic series named Constant that began in 2006 and terminated in 2016.

Since the late 1990s Platt has made abstract works out of everyday gestures and objects that have resonance for her, but also a point of entry into conceptual concerns.

Platt brings elements of the everyday, along with personal and autobiographical content, into a conceptual art practice. The particular landscape represented in the Constant series is a place she has been photographing for over ten years. She is interested in the process of sustained looking, particularly at something that is familiar, and what occurs through an accumulation of images. She is also intrigued by the tension between what changes in the scene and what stays the same.

“The particular landscape represented [in Constant] is a place I have been returning to and photographing for over ten years. The process of sustained observation, as well as the aggregation and manipulation of these images, transforms the familiar,” said Platt.

“I am intrigued by the tension between what changes in the scene (nearly everything) and what stays the same (the floating raft moored in the bay). It is this raft, as well as my position on the shore, which remain constant. Ultimately, it becomes a stand-in for me as well as the viewer. The centering of the subject and the repetition align the series with the New Topographic movement and offer more commonplace, rather than sublime, renditions of nature.”

The nature of Platt’s work and manipulation varies; single images, grids, and composites.

Platt’s works have been shown nationally and internationally. She is also a co-member of the “Shake-n’-Make” project with Hamilton-based writer and maker Claudia B. Manley.

Constant will be on display at the Museum of Art until August 19, 2017.

There will be an artist’s talk and reception at b Contemporary gallery on June 4, 2017 from 2 – 4 p.m. Platt’s formal presentation, centred on her Constant series, will begin at 2:30 p.m.