Lorna Ruth Galloway, Globe, La Puerta, Los Santos, 2016, Charcoal Screen print, 18 x 24
Several artists have reproduced Ed Ruscha's seminal Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) with video games, including Irish artist Alan Butler. Most of them used game-photography as their medium of choice. Miami-based artist Lorna Ruth Galloway, however, has produced a series of charcoal screen prints depicting gas stations found within Grand Theft Auto V, adding an extra layer of mediation.
Lorna Ruth Galloway, Ron, Los Santos County, 2016, Charcoal Screen print, 18 x 24
Galloway captured the images during game play using a cellphone camera. Gas stations are situated in the picture plane as close to Ruscha's as possible. The photographs were subsequently edited and uploaded to Rockstar Games's Social Club platform and shared with other members of the community. Further transformation was required to produce the charcoal screen prints. Here's a detailed description of the process, courtesy of The Sumter Item:
"Galloway downloads the photographs and uses Photoshop to create halftone separations for screen-printing. The halftone, a logarithmic transformation of an image into a series of tiny dots to simulate a continuous tone image, exaggerates the digital, screen-based aspect of the image. At the same time, it references the tradition of photographic reproduction in printmaking.
Galloway combines two seemingly irreconcilable modes - charcoal and silk screen - with the use of a digital image sourced from a video game. Galloway asks the viewer to explore and consider these different levels of mediation. The gasoline stations' corporate icons serve as signifiers to the viewer, but only those familiar with the video game will realize these brands don't really exist. The gas prices serve as an indication of the time the photo was taken. This practice creates images of an "Any Town, USA" that are simultaneously a delicate homage to the places and a blurred disappearance of them."
Lorna Ruth Galloway, Xero, Pacific Buffs, Los Santos, 2016, Charcoal Screen print, 18 x 24
The original set of game photographs was exhibited at Miami Beach Urban Studios in the 2016 solo exhibition Deadpan Realities.
The new series, featuring the charcoal screen prints, is on view at the Sumter Gallery of Art in South Carolina, USA until June 22, 2018, as part of Galloway's show Halftone Half-Lives.
Lorna Ruth Galloway is a Miami-based artist who, as a point of departure, draws upon her experience of growing up near US highway one and witnessing impermanence in the sub-tropic urban landscape. The aesthetics of the American roadside have been an integral part of the formation of her visual world-view. She works in photo-based printmaking techniques, screen printing, polaroid transfers, and large tiled wheat paste installations explore space, time, nostalgia, and the mediated experience.
LINK: Lorna Ruth Galloway
