Peter Matthews

Held Together by Gravity  

2013. Video stills in the form of a digital image. Dimensions variable. 12 images in project.

At sunrise in the wake of a Pacific Ocean storm in Taiwan, a video camera is launched by force towards the horizon. For a momentary period of time the camera remains on its independent journey out into to unknown, and then the earth’s gravitational relationship with the universe apply an unavoidable force upon the camera and it begins its slippage and fall motion.  At the point where the camera touches and penetrates through the surface fabric of the ocean, a video still image is pulled from the moving image in motion and left in its unedited state.  This repetitive action of throwing the camera out towards the horizon and working directly with some of the principal forces that shape our universe and nature of time and space yield images that seek to extend our visual perception of something which is seen and felt yet remains immaterial, invisible, elusive and mystically intangible. While working in the intertidal zone of ocean, there is a sincere attempt to leave somewhere and arrive somewhere, a sense of discovery matched by a sense of loss, to reach out there in an unorthodox manner to attract and retrieve something beautiful and visceral, fleeting and rare.