Using documentary images culled from newspaper archives, Jeremy Shaw’s Cathartic Illustration series (2019-2023) depicts subjects that appear to be experiencing an excessive spiritual, somatic or technological altered state of consciousness.
The source photographs have been refracted in-camera through various effect lenses in the process of reshooting, skewing the subject’s poses and proportions to illustrate a subjective experience upon which one can only speculate. The mediation of historical images by analogue means (without digital manipulation or output) in the tactile medium of silkscreen, further obscures their date of production in a manner akin to Shaw’s filmic works. Although created in a medium that is effective for wide distribution, the screenprints of Cathartic Illustration are produced as unique works. Could it be that these restless souls, whose only obstacle is never getting high enough, finally find a home in such an image and properly transcend to their desired utopias?