I Drive You Crazy, to the Moon, 2011

.. excerpt from an essay by Barbara Garrie, an arts writer and lecturer in art history and theory at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Following on from ‘I Saw You’ (2007) and ‘I Must Behave’, ‘I Drive You Crazy, to the Moon’ continues to explore the social and political imperatives that have become characteristic concerns of Connew’s practice. While the earlier editions in this series focused a critical eye on systems of surveillance and control, this current body of work grapples more abstractly with the geo-political implications of capitalist frameworks. ‘I Drive You Crazy, to the Moon’ is composed of a collection of photographs taken while making a journey by car. Streams of light are captured as the vehicle makes its way along the road to its elusive destination. Upon excavating this iconography, the journey reveals itself as a metaphor for oil, its production and consumption, and the impact of these processes on our social fabric. That the precise location of this journey remains ambiguous speaks all the more loudly of the trans-national reach of the capitalist machine and our reliance on precious resources, the acquisition of which may be fraught with problems. These serious themes are explored, somewhat paradoxically, through what are unarguably beautiful, poetic and rather lyrical images that purposefully skew Connew’s social/political thread. The seductive dark surfaces of the night skies are laced with ribbons of light that convey a sense of speed and complex movement, and which give the images a strong graphic quality. Like the impressionistic images in ‘I Saw You’, these photographs have taken on an almost painterly dimension in their move away from purely figurative documentation. There is also something fleeting and otherworldly about the pictures. A sense of tension or frenetic energy can be detected as the lines of light vibrate in unpredictable patterns across the surface of the images.