Everyday there is something to learn. A website telling you about the newest hole-in-the-wall cafe, some new clothing label that's the next big thing. You're so on top of your game with information and images at your fingertips. Photos are everywhere - Instagram, social media and all those insipid blogs. People are using photos to reveal everything. Every telling detail. This photo series strips away details. It’s about photography. Grain, light, colour. It’s keeping something to itself. It’s a secret. What are you looking at?

Using vernacular photography as my language to capture the colour field. Using a broken Olympus Mju, held together with tape and elastic bands without of date film that emphasizes film grain. Occasionally the camera leaks light on to the negative, spilling out a red dash across the photo. The images are as much about film as they are colour. Red, green and blue granularity.

I broke up with a girlfriend in 2012 and moved out of the place we shared to Richmond; near Goschs Paddock and the Yarra. I started walking and jogging along the paths next to the Yarra and would find myself taking photos of the sunsets and sunrises.  Knowing how cheesy and mundane these could be, but also finding myself enjoying the colours I was seeing, I wondered how you could make these not so boring and typical.  It lead me to thinking about abstract painting - especially Rothko and Barnett Newman. If I cut out the horizon line all I would have left is a colour gradient.

I was taking my cameras everywhere anyway, so now I just had another subject. The sky. But these are only fleeting moments, when conditions are right. When there isn’t a thousand buildings or power lines blocking the line of sight. And when the clouds don't give away the image.

We all dream. We look up to the sky, ponder and drift away...  These are the moments of contemplation, of relaxation, of anxiety and when we just need a blank space to stare at.  They’re fleeting moments that come and go and can never happen again. These images try and capture that moment -  life's Holding Patterns.
- Tim Hillier

*image (left)
Tim Hillier
Holding Pattern #008, 2014
Digital print on Kodak Endura Metallic, 152 x 102 cm
courtesy of the artist and Tristian Koenig