Andrew Grassie Giraffe, 2020

The work is from a new body of work exploring images from the artist’s image archive, among them decades old snapshots associated with personal memories, tied to a specific place, a moment in time. Andrew Grassie chose motifs that had held his attention for reasons he could not always explain: photos from his image archive, sometimes many decades old and exuding a vague awkwardness, became sources for these works.

Each image of this series can be traced to a specific moment, often specific visual phenomena, remembered by the artist for personal and/or artistic reasons.

In the words of Andrew Grassie:

"The photograph [on which this work is based] was taken about ten years ago in a zoo/safari park in Normandy, France. A small train took you on a tour round the grounds. You were separated from the animals by a tall fence. This giraffe came over to the train and stood quite still. The sky was almost totally white creating a neutral backdrop objectifying the creature. Retrospectively, I realise there is a scene with a taxidermied giraffe in Chris Marker’s film La Jetée (1962). A film I have referenced for its cinematic narrative made up from photographic stills as well as for its looping character."

The intimately scaled, precisely painted work is executed in tempera, a painting technique associated with pre-Renaissance panel paintings anteceding the development of oil paint.