Stranger Than Fiction presents six of Joan Fontcuberta's pieces of work. Fauna (1987) Fontcuberta collaborated with Pere Formiguera, and they created artistic work that questions the authority and reality of museum displays, with the use of different visual languages; detailed notes and taxidermy animals.
Herbarium (1984) Fontcuberta photographs sculptural objects that visually look like plants that he sets out to describe and name as new plant species, he created the sculptures using existing plants and various man-made materials such as electrical wires and other textiles.
Orogenesis (2002) Fontcuberta uses a topographic computer program that converts map contours into three-dimensional landscape images, he uses old landscape paintings and photographs and using this program enables him to create new photographic imagery of new viewpoints of particular landscapes.
Constellations (1993) Fontcuberta creates believable images which look like the night sky, with the amazing view of thousands of stars, however this work is fictional as in fact it was created by Fontcuberta putting photographic paper on the window of his car, what seems to be stars are in fact insects, dust and dirt what had collected on the window during his journeys.
Sirens (2002) In 1947 Father Jean Fontana found fossilised remains of a sea cow, which have features similar to that of a human. Fontcuberta created the story of the discovery of mermaid fossil that is entirely fictional, he done rearranging and replacing the fossils in the Provence landscape, then photographing them to use them as evidence to back up his fictional story.
Karelia, Miracles & Co (2002) Fontcuberta creates this work by looking at interdenominational Valhamönde Monastery, where monks are said to learn how to perform miracles. Fontcuberta dressed as a monk and exposed these miracles as hoaxes by digitally editing himself into particular images, where it would seem as if real, it would be a miracle, such as walking on water.
Joan Fontcuberta's work investigates the truth and reliability of photography. Using different visual languages of journalism, advertising, museum displays and scientific journals, he creates documentary narratives that combine reality and fiction. Within most of his piece's of work the imagery is fictional while the stories behind the work is sometimes factual which Fontcuberta's tries to challenge in his art.
In the exhibition my favourite piece of work was Fauna (1987) where Fontcuberta collaborated with Pere Formiguera, and they created artistic work that questions the authority and reality of museum displays, with the use of different visual languages; detailed notes and taxidermy animals. They used taxidermy to combine existing animals to create new mystical creatures. These fake animals are made to seem as if they once lived on this planet. With the help of museum displays and journals which include fictional notes about these animals, alongside diagrams and skeleton drawings on the wall of what the animals bone structure would look like. Photography plays an important role with in this work as it supports this fictional project to make it seem as if it's a piece of documented history. They would place the taxidermy in spaces which would seem like there natural habitat and photograph them, making these creatures seem real. I really enjoyed this piece as so much effort and different visual languages were used to make something fictional seem so real.
I looked at this exhibition as the work in it, showed me how powerful photography is as it can make something fictional seem a reality. We don't always just believe photographs on their own, but if they are used alongside other visual languages and displayed in a certain way they can be believed as factual evidence, Looking at this exhibition i want to take reference and use photography and film to make staged scenarios of real events happening around the world seem like they are real, to try and provoke a response from an audience.
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