Untitled (tuvaluan triptych)

Photography: Jamie North

Tim Silver studied at Sydney College of the Arts (1994-97) and College of Fine Arts, University of NSW graduating MFA in 2004. He has been exhibiting throughout Australia since the late 1990s and was included in ‘Primavera 2002’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. Silver began using photography in 2004 and has worked with Jamie North since in order to create the still images which now form the major part of his practice. Michael Desmond (‘Art Asia Pacific #51’, Winter 2007) noted that ‘Silver’s works are performances, presenting an unfolding drama of accelerated decay…’. The photo works make time visible whereas Silver’s earlier sculptural pieces, made from materials such as Crayola, inferred the passing of time and the inevitability of destruction.

‘The Tuvaluan project’ consists of a series of 21 type C photographs shot on Tuvalu which appear to follow a loose narrative. Each image refers to the history of images and their makers, for example: Tracey Moffatt (‘Something more’ 1989); Japanese horror film (‘Ringu’ 1998); or Benetton’s 1992 image of a man dying of AIDS and so on. Also included were a number of objects made from coconut oil which, in common with many of Silver’s objects, were bound to slowly disintegrate.

The untitled triptych of unique prints depicts the tide rolling in over the Tuvaluan islands. This ceaseless activity acting on the unprotected outcrops in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in combination with the possible effects of global warming emphasise the fragility of the world we live in. Silver travelled twice to Tuvalu over a 12 month period in order to develop this new body of work.