A feeling of awe wells within me while gazing into Andrew Yip’s photo media works (Network I-VI) from his latest body of exhibition, Cloud Chamber, on show at Jerico Contemporary. This feeling is not particularly unusual, but rather age old; universal. Inspired by elements of 19thcentury sublime landscape painting—in which individuals were confronted by the majesty and awe of nature and were changed by it—the photo media works evoke a similar sense of magnificence and wonder often felt when in the presence of ancient trees.
The photo media works are whimsical and ghostly visual reproductions of the complex data maps that make up a series of local Morton Bay fig trees. By using digital scanning techniques, Yip has achieved an x-ray like view into the matter beneath what we can see and exposed the data networks that would otherwise remain invisible to the human eye. Through visualising the organic, rhizomatic root and branch networks of the trees, Yip creates a metaphor for the hidden forces that govern our everyday lives, and in turn, reinstate the crucial significance of trees and all that they stand for.