Ra di Martino

One of the exhibitions I have visited recently has been Worlds In Collision at the Samstag Museum. I didn't know what to expect when I went, but I really enjoyed the works of artists Paul Laffoley and Susan Hiller, but my favourite work was by Ra di Martino. Martino is a photographic artist, and for the series of work included in the exhibition visited abandoned Star Wars sets in the North African desert and documented them. The first thing that struck me about the work was a sense of familiarity, which soon turned to realisation of the subject once I read her titles. It is fascinating that these locations even exist as I would have thought that the Lucas company would have been expected to clean up after filming, but apparently it is common practice for film crews to leave behind anything they no longer want, which creates an interesting dialogue between the power of wealthy countries and the forced acceptance of developing companies. The other story behind these sets is that they have begun to fall into a state of decrepitude as even though Star Wars fans started to try and restore the sites after seeing Martino's images, locals to the area continue to scavenge them for building materials. There is therefore an endless cycle of mending and destroying, and the sites become akin to archaeological digs or relics from a long forgotten time. The relevance of Martino's work to my own is that there is a strong sense of the apocalyptic to be interpreted from the images of decaying architecture, and the lifelessness of the landscapes is a useful source for my own development of imagery.

Ra di Martino, No More Stars, 2010, lambda prints, 31 x 31 cm