Alexi Hobbs – Elated

Our hands lust out for something more than we feel each day. The moment of the morning when light ekes onto the floor, slicing us from reality for a short while. It is a distorted reality, relished in the camera’s presence and its ability to pick up the invisible. The melancholic sensation of the photograph’s rendition of a dream like reality deals with beauty in unconventional ways. Yet, the imbalance to our subconscious and our lives is dealt with in the series of photographs. A hand surges toward an unnatural light source, each finger extending past its capabilities, and each muscle at the end of its ability. It mirrors the search for a blissful vision, one that fogs our general view of the world, something we never stop holding onto, reaching further and further until our bodies cannot take it anymore, commencing a break. The moments of found collisions break up the intimate scenes, never dealing with what’s going on but always looking back to the last moment of clarity, when all is perfect in their world.

Our body’s left exhausted as our heart beats faster than it has before, the climactic experience that we are always yearning for, in everything we put our hands to. But this context relies on the activity amongst rooms and heated bed sheets, as the experience leaves us well and truly buried within a pool of desire. Always followed by the notion of breaking, whether in the form of glass on the floor or our physical recovery. When the playful meets the practical, the two components needed to fulfil our lives. We do not loose our sense of place, but merely leave it for a short while for what may seem an implosion of minutes. It is the feeling of being alive, and living to our full capacity – a feeling that may appear temporary but never leaves our minds as we conjure notions of love and empathy towards another. Everything seeming so beautiful, affecting the way we view the world after the experience of pleasure.

But the photographs fail to show the present action, only ever the remains of what is left after experience, leaving us to use our imagination and fill in the gaps of what might have caused such a whimsical reaction for the people involved. And as the moment is carried through, an attempt to remember becomes the product of the event that left us feeling elated beyond what we could imagine. The series ultimately leaves the viewer shut outside of the house where it all happened, merely left wondering.