Mounting Evidence: Traces of things to come

Drawing on popular culture’s fascination with forensic science, these paintings play with physical evidence and literally generates mountains out of molehills. In manipulating proofs of where things have been, I create a fantasy of how things can become when taken out of context. Focusing on the legal system as a symbol of the superiority of Western civilisation, the project explores the ‘majesty’ of justice as it is manifested in the everyday administration of criminal cases, where the prosecution builds its argument out of the fragments of evidence collected, analysed and presented as a coherent story of actions and intentions.

Mountains are evocative symbols for the justice system. Lofty mountains depicted in Chinese painting are, like Western justice, fascinating, awe-inspiring and spiritual realms that are beyond the reach of most ordinary people. Mountains are often sacred places where believers pay pilgrimage to seek health and longevity and where scholars and intellectuals seek self-improvement and enlightenment.

If drawing is a way of making marks, this project turns the act of drawing upside down. Just like the forensic scientist, the artist makes visible the traces created by objects by ‘dusting’ objects with powder and ‘lifting’ the traces on sticky tapes. These traces are then converted into digital images using a computer scanner. In the same way that a prosecutor puts together a criminal case, the artist builds cases from the evidence that has been made visible. Instead of making a direct mark, the artist ‘paints’ the image using the palettes of physical traces as pigments. The works combine both realist and surrealist techniques in a way that transgresses the processes and conventions of traditional Chinese painting while at the same time appropriates its presentation format.

Exhibitions

28 July - 1 August 2008 Mounting Evidence. Exhibition Space, UNSW College of Fine Arts.

8-17 July 2010 Triplicated. Group exhibition J Chan, T Gregory and O Watts, Chalk Horse Gallery.

Janet Chan's work plays with many registers from the indexical (footprints, finger prints), the metaphoric (layered evidence as the layers of rock in mountains) and traditional iconography (sites of crime, mountains as places of beauty and scholarly refuge). Chan uses her experience as a criminologist to plumb the law's surveillance and the forensic images that are created. Using digital techniques Chan moves seamlessly between these various registers. Chan's work calls to mind shows like CSI that turn forensic science into sublime imagery. Chan demonstrates that evidence does indeed build a picture, and that the final judgement, in channel Nine's ratings and in the courtroom, is based on the aesthetics of that picture. Judges and juries have become art critics. (Chalk Horse exhibition).