Openings

The title for this work was inspired by a passage of text in a book by Barry Lopez, found in a cabin while on a retreat in the Nevada Desert: “be alert for… openings, for that moment when something sacred reveals itself within the mundane, and you know the land knows you are there." 

These analog photographs were made during long periods spent alone in nature, releasing the shutter of my camera at the moment when I felt that my self temporarily dissolved into the nature surrounding me. While in this unmediated state, I put intuition before intellect, embracing the land as a mystery to be experienced, not questioned. I have drawn on Carl Jung’s writings on the primordial mind, DH Lawrence’s idea of ‘blood knowledge’, and ‘primary point’ in Zen Buddhism.

“My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.”

D. H. Lawrence

Artist Biography

Nicholas Holt is an artist working with photography to focus on our relationship with ‘nature’.

His projects encompass a variety of physical and conceptual terrain against the backdrop of a rapidly changing environment.

His work is characterised by a balance of conceptualism and an intuitive personal vision.

He ascribes to John Cage’s maxim of art as self-alteration as opposed to self-expression.