IMAGES

The image-based practice of Megan Plunkett is an investigation of material conditions and visual economies of reality in photography. She utilizes movement, seriality, and other types of disambiguation to cultivate a sense of estrangement and distance within familiar and mundane images, often harvested online or staged using techniques drawn from forms of forensic evidence. Her installations are set up to create moments where the material conditions of an image are made clear, and then disrupted. As such, Plunkett’s work is constantly pushing back against a false sense of totality or wholeness in favor of a photographic activity that expands outwards, where images are invariably bound up and imbricated with each other and their archive.[1]

In CTZNMEG, the photographic works have each been made in the studio, centering on objects that Plunkett has gathered and altered or made by hand. At first glance the objects depicted appear to be identifiable, yet upon prolonged looking any singular identification is quickly replaced with a multiplicity of possible interpretations. Together these images construct a kind of typology, a close-knit group that behave like one another but are bracketed by their differences. Haunting in their simultaneous familiarity and otherness, the photographs reflect Plunkett’s interests, particularly in sources ranging from 1950s Sci-Fi lore such as The Twilight Zone to more contemporary explorations of extraterrestrial life. For instance, a glowing sculpture of a cat is also a radiant, almost celestial, orb. Indeed, the objects appear as planets or suns, or seen differently, perhaps as atoms or UFOs.

As counterpoint, CTZNMEG pairs the hovering, uncanny objects in these photographs with the earthbound Vavas, four catnip-filled dog-shaped cat toys casually scattered across the floor. These works invite the engagement and rearrangement by Bug and Anita, two felines who live in the domestic space attached to the gallery. The plushy dog dolls, each titled Vava after Plunkett’s current canine companion (a mutt rescue), are distinct and precise: a Rottweiler, two German Shepherds, and a Belgian Malinois, representing the breed results of Vava’s recently completed genealogical test.

For Plunkett, operating as private investigator, ufologist and practitioner of the sleight-of-hand, the works articulate various lines of inquiry as a kind of fact-finding mission, pointing equally to an expanding body of knowledge and an articulation of that which lies beyond knowing, an un-knowledge, a kind of knowledge dark matter. In Plunkett’s quest, the point of identifying and articulating this area of dark matter is not to uncover truths but to allow the existence of that which lies outside knowing and which can never be known.[2]

Megan Plunkett (b. 1985, Pasadena, CA, lives in Los Angeles) has been heavily involved with F from its beginning in 2014, contributing to each issue of F Magazine (as herself or through contributions attributed to her publishing imprint Kingsboro Press), and has participated in numerous F group exhibitions and activities.[3] Significantly, in 2020, Plunkett partnered with F to organize the F Mag Mail Art Auction to Benefit the USPS. Recent solo exhibitions include Leave It, Sweetwater, Berlin (2022), Electric Avenue, Emalin, London (2021), Return to Sender, F, Houston (2020), and Plus One, with John Miller, Shoot the Lobster, New York (2018). She completed her MFA at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, in 2017, and a course in Forensic Photography at the University of California, Riverside, in 2020.

CV

[1]  Emalin gallery website: emalin.co.uk/artists/megan-plunkett
[2]  See: Wendt, Alexander and Duvall, Raymond. “Sovereignty and the UFO,” Political Theory, Volume 36 Number 4, August 2008
[3]  Megan Plunkett in conversation with Adam Marnie: emalin.co.uk/stories/story/megan-plunkett-Almost-a-Mirror, March 2021

Clockwise from door:

Signs and Mirrors 13
2023
Inkjet print on glossy paper, red metal frame
4 x 6 inches (10.16 x 15.24 cm) (image)
8 x 10 inches (20.32 x 25.4 cm) (frame)

Carousel of Progress
2023
Inkjet print on glossy paper, red metal frame
4 3/4 diameter (12.07 cm) (image)
11 x 11 inches (27.94 x 27.94 cm) (frame)

Bullet (Cat)
2023
Inkjet print on platine fiber rag paper, wood frame
9 x 9 1/2 inches (22.86 x 24.13 cm) (image and frame)

The Answer Man
2023
Inkjet print on platine fiber rag paper, black metal frame
12 x 10 1/2 inches (30.48 x 26.67 cm) (image)
18 1/2 x 12 inches (45.72 x 30.48 cm) (frame)

Sighted
2023
Inkjet print on platine fiber rag paper, silver metal frame
8 x 8 inches (20.32 x 20.32 cm) (image and frame)

On floor:

The Vavas
2023
Four altered plush dog dolls, catnip

Vava (Shepherd 01), 6 1/2 x 9 x 3 inches (16.51 x 22.86 x 7.62 cm)
Vava (Shepherd 02), 7 x 7 x 6 inches (17.78 x 17.78 x 15.24 cm)
Vava (Rottweiler), 7 x 6 x 3 1/2 inches (17.78 x 15.24 x 8.89 cm)
Vava (Belgian Malinois), 8 x 5 x 3 1/2 inches (20.32 x 12.7 x 8.89 cm)

Installation photography of Megan Plunkett CTZNMEG © Francisco Ramos

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For more information, please contact Adam Marnie at office@fmagazine.info