JON SNAPE
Systems of Différance
Selenium Toned Silver Prints, 2008
Portsmouth Guildhall and Bolton Town Hall are two neoclassical civic buildings that were built to the same plan and for the same purpose, but with some differences. This piece, comprising a diptych of photographs of the two buildings, is intended to demonstrate the post-modern textual principle of différance as applied to ‘visual language’. Each individual image is meaningless without constant reference to the other. The term différance was coined by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who developed the hugely influential procedure known as deconstruction – the writing of a close analytical reading of a text in order to dismantle its hierarchies. Différance, conjoining the terms difference and deferral, is neither a word, nor a concept and plays upon the distinction between the audible and the written and typifies a notion of writing that breaks down the logic of signs. In structural linguistic terms, signs are combinations of signifiers and the signified and are products of systems of differences.
Jon Snape graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Portsmouth in 2003.
His work is based in photography and is intended to draw a comparison between the sometimes contradictory theories, underpinning painting, and the mechanically reproduced image in a contemporary context, drawing ideas and inspiration from modern/post-modern society and debate.
Jon’s work often consists of a series of photographic images arranged in a linear or matrix fashion. This arrangement, along with the subject matter is designed to highlight similarities and dissimilarities within layers of meaning.
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