Reviews

The sky “above us” takes on a double meaning: it is both the limit to our gaze and, at the same time, a sign of the infinite, placing our world within the infinity of space. In Christian mythology it is "God" who lives up there, the sky represents the seat of freedom and redemption. So the sky acts as a metaphor for boundaries as well as for the boundless.

In his photographs, Christopher Newberry sets earthly objects in front of the heavenly backdrop with its lure of freedom. They obstruct the open view, they become obstacles, getting in the observer's way. The dialectic of the solid, distinct objects and the objectless ether surrounding them, of the finite and the infinite, is the theme of these, in a sense, philosophical photographs.
The artist, whose exhibition of landscape photographs in Winchester, Tower Arts Centre, made waves last year, explores a new direction here with his series of artefacts in front of skies.
A world of order, of rules, of necessity appears in front of the delicate blue, the formless, the oceanic expanse of heaven. The large, imposing pictures show objects with hard contours and strong colours, interrupting or highlighting the gentle quality of the blue skies. For its part, the sky serves as screen without which the artefacts would not unfold their stunning impact. His subtle shading of blue enhance the colours of the objects. Or is it the contrary, their brilliance that brings out the specific blue in each picture?

What connects foreground and background is the light in which both are bathed. Newberry's eye for colour and light, and the vitality of the visual composition, point in passing to the artist's Mexican roots: expressing a secular, cheerful perspective on the eternal.

- Heidemarie Schumacher
Bonn University
Media Studies

This is a stunning set of photos

- Paul Carter, photographer