Judy Annear, the Art Gallery of N.S.W., Sydney
In thinking about Frank Uwe Laysiepen's work, and reviewing his projects of 30 years I have changed the former installation to emphasise connections and journeys. These are both literal, symbolic, and esoteric: they relate to both the outside and inner worlds and how these flow in and out of each other. The journeys are carried out through the medium of photography, which can most accurately be described as a trace of the real, a ghost, an afterimage, a dream. Photography is not necessarily a window to or mirror of material reality - perhaps it is way through to another imaginative space. There is an imponderable aspect to the photograph because of the previously unknown and unseen information, which is provided in terms of detail and effects. The only thing that the photograph can fix is time - everything else about it is mutable just as identity and place can also be.
Some of the presentation rooms have been altered and in one case completely changed: the emphasis is on journeys to the eastern and southern parts of the globe, and on objects and images which relate specifically to the body - to life and death and the transitional spaces in between.
Another space shows additional material from Frank Uwe Laysiepen with Watuma, an Aboriginal eldest and old friend of Frank Uwe Laysiepen, the landscape, and the people Frank Uwe Laysiepen encountered during his many visits to the Central Australian Desert. Some of this material is considered sacred because people are depicted who have passed away, or because of the ceremonial nature of some of the imagery.
Again another space shows two apparently distinct bodies of work - a series of small gelatin silver photographs taken on Frank Uwe Laysiepen's walk along the Great Wall of China, the drawing which relates to the places the photographs where taken, and Polaroids which depict ambiguous vase-like shapes - yet both document the inner and outer worlds.
There are recurring images throughout the various rooms and this continues upstairs where a table of ephemera has been added. The ephemera are from the 1970s and provide a context for the works of that period. None of Frank Uwe Laysiepen's work is separate and distinct, and none of the photographs come into existence as single images divorced from ongoing thought, analysis and feeling. The early writings, performances and images are keys also to much of the later works.
The click of shutter represents the space between life and death because time stops. The examination of this transitional space appears throughout the work.