Audrey Gillespie

Photographing queer youth, drag and my own existential crisis with femininity my works create bold but ambient scenes, inviting the viewer to submerge into a world of emotion driven by a hazy aesthetic. Using lo-fi techniques to create an unpolished grungy form with 35mm format photography and 90’s camcorders, block colours glaze the moments where the celestial gloom of my subjects lurk. Mixed media, screen print and other forms of collage have taken shape within this photographic series as part of a side project of experimental works.

"My overall theme within my work is still the same but this series came about as a response to me moving away from my home town to a bigger city just recently. The subject pictured is my first female friend that I made having moved. I have such a delirious background to my previous home town, I never wanted to have anything I ever photographed look noticeably recognizable as the place that it is, like some sort of unconscious shame or hate for where I grew up and where I was stuck in for so long. I would try and disguise or distract the attention within the picture to create some sort of different landscape, for reasons that only annoyed and irritated me. When I got to my now home, it was nearly a necessity that I photographed something... anything right in the city centre. It was a catharsis of how relieved I was to be somewhere new, even if it was only 2 hours away from where I grew up. This is an incredibly different place where I reside now and it bothers me so little whether it's recognizable or not. I always knew I needed out, but perhaps not as much as I had initially thought."

​Instagram: @artdrey__
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