The Illusion of Purpose
Victoria J Dean

Technology is restructuring our communication methods, transforming our perceptions and interactions with our environment, and rendering the physical realm comparatively cumbersome and slow. Disconnected from the modern digital world, these material structures and the systems in which they once functioned are obsolete. With the simplicity and directness of a symbolic form, each structure withholds its message, alluding to a relic from a forgotten language. The Illusion of Purpose explores ideas of materiality, monumentality and the sculptural, questioning the relevance of the physical in our increasingly virtual age, and in a world of communication hijacked by technology.

Victoria J. Dean (b. Belfast, 1980) is a photographic artist based in Northern Ireland. On completion of an MFA Photography from Belfast School of Art at Ulster University, Dean was awarded the Royal Ulster Academy Award for Outstanding Students and was selected by Olivia Arthur (Magnum Photographer), and Anna Sparham (Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London) in Source Magazine’s Graduate Photography Online 2017 Selections. She was a finalist in the Klompching Gallery’s FRESH 2017, and a winner in the LensCulture Emerging Talent Awards 2017, for her series, The Illusion of Purpose.

Dean has exhibited and been published internationally including Emerging (Slideshow Night)at the Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, 2015; the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2015, London; 185th RHA Annual Exhibition, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 2015; Circulation(s) 2014: Festival de la Jeune Photographie Européenne, Paris; Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography (Karen Downey, curator; Colin Graham, publication author) at Belfast Exposed and The Mac in Belfast, 2013; the Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward 2013in Toronto, London and Boston; and PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers to Watch for 2007, New York.

Another Place Press is a small independent publisher showcasing contemporary landscape photography.
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