From 2000 onwards, Thoma has often been presenting photography next to her painting. When invited to participate in the group exhibition Land2D – Beyond Landscape? (2004-5), she decided to show a photograph of the textured detail of a carpet next to three of her ‘Lines of Light’ paintings. The photograph was printed the same size as the paintings allowing for a simple juxtaposition of very different phenomenological registers.
Some of these insights (with the later inclusion of video) informed her PhD (2013) Thought Dwellings: Time and Space in Painting, Photography and Video.
In recent years, Thoma’s use of photography has become more ‘free-floating’ – at times printed in medium to large-size formats, at other times inserted as still images within moving image footage or presented within the format of the artist’s book.
Andrea Thoma 