Looking At God
Looking at God is a series of landscape photographs made at locations around Ireland where signs with Bible verses have been nailed to trees or lamp posts. These hand painted warnings proclaim the judgment of God and question how prepared the reader is for their seemingly imminent death. Their often bucolic locations seem directly at odds with the urgent directives for onlookers to consider their mortality. However if we look at these scenes through the words of the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach who said “All gods, and hence all religions, are simply projections of human desires,” we begin to sense an alternative narrative, one where these proclamations become frames to build a god inside. Here the painted signs are a launching pad to begin visualising the words and what such a place might look like. Drawing inspiration from John Martin’s famous Last Judgment paintings and the the romantic spirit of optimism in the new Arcadia of the Hudson River Painters like Cole and Whittaker. Here we are looking at a landscape which is lit up like a stage ready for a lead actor who is for some reason absent.
