Tanja Milbourne, The Flooding of Venice, Palazzo Mora, 2016. Photograph mock-up proposal.

The Flooding of Venice
About the work:
Science predicts a future of global warming, rising sea levels, and likely conflicts over resources. There may come a time when many parts of the world become unliveable, flooded, and abandoned.
'The Flooding of Venice' represents this future as a series of photographs.
Working with a scale-model replica of the room at the Palazzo Mora, in Venice, where the work will be exhibited, the artist creates photographs that depict sequentially – and in great detail – the palazzo becoming increasingly derelict: the wallpaper will start to peel off; the marble will crack; plants will start to grow; debris will collect in the space; the roof will deteriorate; water will come flooding into the space; and its structure will crumble.
(Please note that in the first edition catalogue the images are not the final artwork but only the proposal mock-ups.)
The work functions on multiple levels; the viewer recognises the space depicted by the photographs as the Palazzo Mora, allowing them to identify the predictions being made as likely possibilities of what the future may hold for the space they are standing in.
On another level, the viewer will also be able to recognise the 'lie' of the photographs. By presenting the photographs of the modelled space within the real space they challenge the accepted ‘reality’ of the photograph and in particular the architectural photograph.
During the exhibition, as the viewer progresses through the space, the images progress through time, taking the visitor on a journey through imaginary space-time, highlighting concerns about climate change, and inviting a critical examination of the role of the photograph.
About the Artist:
Tanja Milbourne is a photographer and artist.
In her professional capacity as commercial photographer, working in architecture, she knows exactly how to frame a space and what to change about her position, optics, the furniture or styling to achieve the desired effect.
She works with spaces and buildings every day, so her creative process regularly takes the exhibition site (or part thereof) as the base subject matter for the work to be shown there. This creates a sense of familiarity and engages the viewer directly within the structure and context of their own presence in the space.
It encourages a critical examination of the presented work and the act of seeing.
As tools and to understand the process of perception, she is very interested in social psychology, incorporating subtle elements to stimulate cognitive bias, priming and associative coherence to enhance the effectiveness of her work.