Behind the Lens: Audrey Blue
October 17th, 2022
Interview by Kate Neave @katylovesart
Join write Kate Neave as she goes Behind the Lens, with photographer Audrey Blue to reveal behind the scenes of 5 key images from their artist portfolio.
This Hurts is an intoxicating series of work by Northern Irish artist Audrey Blue (née Gillespie). A very personal collection of photographs and multimedia, it tracks her experiences, emotions and dreams. When I first saw Audrey’s work I was transfixed. There’s a raw sensitivity to it that draws us in and its rich jewel-like colours lend it an intense impact. Audrey’s practice is created against the backdrop of a country still wrestling with the aftermath of The Troubles, steeped in religious rhetoric and slow to prioritise protecting LGBTQ+ rights.
With this history and context seeping into her work, Audrey explores her own desires, her queer identity and her environment, photographing herself and close friends and their personal interactions. Presenting a visual narrative of youth, queerness and liberation, her rough and ready style and emotional honesty create an intimate connection. Audrey Blue’s work is currently having a moment at her solo show at Seen Fifteen gallery in London.
1) In Night
I think this is the leader image of the whole This Hurts series. There had been a lot of death in my family and I was in a really bad place. I was pinning about two bottles of wine a night to go to sleep and I was having these really weird, anxiety fuelled dreams. In the dream that ended up fuelling this picture, I was lying down and my feet floated up in the air before the rest of me followed. My teeth fell out and I was trying to grab them while also trying to hold onto the bed and get back down.
Everything I do is shot in 35 mm film, or some analog format and my little camera only has a two second timer and a ten second timer. So to get this shot the camera’s on a tripod and I'm setting the timer, and I'm running and I am flinging myself at this chair on the bed.
Of course, the room’s quite dimly lit as well. There's nothing really in the way between me in the bed, it’s just a straight run but I've only got 10 seconds. It’s not really working but then thankfully, my friend Connor dropped by and I'm just standing in my underwear being like, “Can you help me take this photo, please?” I think we get it in two shots. We didn't get it in one shot because in the first shot, my little cat runs up and jumps right there in the front.
2) Molko
This is also a self portrait. It’s one I took at the height of lockdown. I was thinking about how you’re supposed to present to the world when you have no observer. When it's just for yourself. When you're just stuck at home you're really forced to look at yourself a lot. That's what this photo ended up talking about.
I just felt like I was losing myself after having really close personal deaths around me and then all of a sudden whole world is dying as well. I just succumbed to the blurriness and wanted to make a picture about feeling like a duplicate, of feeling kind of like a double of the person that you're presenting. It holds the person that you are hiding and the person that you feel like you're trying to like hold on to whilst also simultaneously losing. I liked the idea of using the double exposure as an obvious symbolism of the double.
3) Sarah In Newcastle
This image is of my friend Sarah. We were in Newcastle in Northern Ireland in my wife’s family's caravan. It was amazing because it just hasn't been touched in years. It was everything that I love about interior design, which is old stuff and pink.
Every time we went somewhere that weekend we’d get a notification about Covid and it was slowly creeping up on us. Eventually, we just spent the last night in the caravan and this was a wholesome moment we shared.
Sarah might be one of the first few queer people that I met growing up in Derry, Northern Ireland as a teenager. And so I think Sarah has been in the stratosphere of me finding myself and she’s somebody who I'm always going to connect with in terms of creativeness and identity as well.
We are intruder youths invading this area of subconscious history. I think that idea has to do with the politics of Northern Ireland and of us as queer people that occupy contemporary space. I didn't want to be another person making work about The Troubles because it's a story that's already been told. But when the people around you have been affected by The Troubles, and you're making work about them it's gonna seep its way in there, no matter what.
But I don't resent that the work has a backdrop to growing up in Northern Ireland because that is just the truth and the truth that comes with that is the background of the The Troubles.
4) Waiting
Funny enough, this image was taken on the same day in Newcastle. It's about 12 in the afternoon, maybe earlier, and Susan, my wife wanted to go to a little arcade. There’s something that just absolutely wrecked my brain about being in broad daylight with a coffee in hand one minute and then stepping into night time zone. I like to play on daytime and nighttime and what it does to the brain.
I’m thinking about why some people feel more comfortable at night time because I've always been a night person. I was incredibly bored and brought the camera along. I think photographing Susan is just something that I always want to do.
Of course, I think she's beautiful and as I'm photographing her, we're creating a queer history of our relationship which is sort of a political relationship just because we happen to be a same sex couple. And that just so happens to be something that was illegal at the time as gay marriage wasn’t legalised until 2020 in Northern Ireland. It adds to the canon of queer art and queer photography and I quite like that thought.
5) Seething Hot Wall install
My degree is in Fine Art rather than photography and I work across many different mediums. I've made series of paintings, series of photographic works and then some other experimental media in between.
I always liked a cluster formation for showing my work. I like that it harks back to very traditional ways of displaying art. I wanted to capture the essence of that but make it something that feels more contemporary. I took some tape and I taped the works together and I really liked that it connected them.
Then text came in. ‘I'm trying so hard’ was a mantra that was going through my head at the time. I've always liked poetry and words and always had a thing for physical text.
My current show at Seen Fifteen is set up similarly to this, encompassing multimedia elements, all mediums, some text and vinyl and all taped together in an installation.
Audrey Blue’s solo exhibition This Hurts continues until 29 October 2022 at Seen Fifteen, London.
About Audrey Blue
Audrey Blue (b.1998) is an Irish fine artist from Derry, Northern Ireland, currently based in Belfast. She graduated in 2020 with first class honours in a BA in Fine Art from Ulster University, Belfast School of Art. Blue was awarded Best Emerging Artist by AVA festival and was shortlisted for Vogue Talent 2019.
She won the public vote in ‘Fine Art/ Photography’ with i-D x Arts Thread’s Global Design Graduate Showcase 2020 and was nominated by Photo Ireland to join the FUTURES Photography platform in 2021. In 2022, Blue was selected for 'New Irish Works' with Photo Ireland and exhibited in the Photo Ireland Festival 2022 and in Common Market, Belfast.
Other exhibitions include This Hurts at Belfast Exposed Gallery and Queer Editions, Performing for the Camera at the Preus Museum, Norway both 2022.