Rik Pinkcombe’s work engages with the concept that contemporary existence in the developed world is saturated by a de-personalised, profit-driven media, affecting our identity and distorting our view of the world around us.
Pinkcombe’s manipulation and distortion of the visual field in his photography, causing some of his images to look like architectural models or theatrical stage-sets, signifies a misreading of global, personal and political landscapes. The images are captured in great detail using a large format camera and then given a heightened air of artificiality by being digitally cleaned to suggest a ‘man-made’ superficial veneer.
Pinkcombe’s mixed-race background particularly informs his work, leading him to visually question different perceptions of identity, and how an individual perceives and is perceived. Pinkcombe considers what it is to be mixed race - quite literally coming from both side of a metaphysical ‘border’ - and the consequences of being perceived or judged as not being from one side or the other.
It is this perception of who we are, where we are from and the difficulty of being classified as a type that motivated Pinkcombe to produce the body of work BorderLine. Pinkcombe’s work touches upon other forms of liminal status and classification, however, considering those who straddle the borderlines of poverty, exploitation, class, power and migration.
Rik Pinkcombe, Untitled, Inkjet print (2000-2006)
