In Jane Burton’s new exhibition, White Stain, darkness is used as a formal component. Shadow and rich blacks add weight to Burton’s imagery; they suggest space and psychological resonance. An emphasis upon tone is a consistent thread in Burton’s work and an expressive aspect of the photographs she has produced since 1999. Any Burton exhibition evokes expectation and this new body of work adds to Burton’s preoccupation with place, ‘her’ mis en scene, which she constructs from a variety of locations – some willingly sourced and others found by chance – but also sees Burton placing her female protagonist within a new setting, and by implication, a new psychological space. 

The single female nude has always been the anchor to Burton’s thinking and often the centrepiece to any one series. Her figures are out of context – isolated – as if in a drift, having put aside their motives for movement, or action. They seem about to let go, drawn necessarily to the terrain in which they find themselves.

Burton’s figures remain both feminine and sexualized but not inclusively. Her characters are siren – like, but beneath their vulnerability, we sense resilience. Their allure turns on voyeurism; we look at them through an aperture, or a cameo, implied by the darkened edge of the print. Our gaze, partially obscured by a frame, suggests we are peeping in. Coventional readings follow from this, and rightly it is the the femme fatale of film noir, or the Gothic novel which comes to mind. Characters are pinioned by plot, their motives set against a catsellated outline or the silhouette of branches.

For Burton the background to any one narrative is complex. She has said of this new series: 

The naked female figures that inhabit the dark spaces of these works are illuminated by the light spill. They are pictured alone, isolated in the light fall, at once revealed but also self-contained and protected. The materiality of the space around is tangible, textural. There is a tension between the figure and the space, between the fragility of flesh and the hard surfaces of walls and floor.

Seen anew, the figures of White Stain suggest pathos, but in light of Burton’s scenes, and the role her figures play, they are more likely ‘ecstatic.’ Although statuesque, they are not Greek in manner, where spirit and body are thought of as one, but suggest Gothic figures, with their angular pose and alert consciousness. Each face is concealed to exclude enquiry but what is felt, and seen inwardly, is private reverie. Light adds to this expression externally, by delineating sinuosity and increasing contrast in the figure. Light, laid upon dark, is a critical factor for Burton:

Pools of light coming through black disrupt the void but they also create a new void – a blown – out portal into nothing – white light as freedom, pain, release, blindness, ecstasy, obliteration.

Landscape also plays an important role in any Burton series and is used to say something about physical terrain or the workings of the subconscious. A figure’s inner mood is matched to the weight of heavy skies or the undulation of a mountain range becomes a reclining torso. These associations become undeniable; their bidding becomes obvious as we go between figure and landscape. Indeed, in the series, motherland, of 2008 Burton photographed the wilds of Tasmania to startling effect. Nature predominated in this case; the figures of the exhibition bowed by the sheer force of raw elements.   

I would suggest that Burton is anti – transcendent in her reach and sentiment. Dare that she would offer any definitive reading of her photo narratives; her intentions are ultimately more complex and for Burton, and the viewer, closure would seem anti- climactic. Her photographs, like her methods, remain resolutely feminine but polyphonous, sounding the many strands that have made up her exhibitions since 1999 and which go towards making White Stain such a compelling exhibition.