Amanda Riffo, admits to having really bad eyesight and it is this physiological shortcoming
which has inspired much of her artistic practice. The act of looking is fundamental to visual
art, it is the meeting of objective reality and subjective experience. Each of us sees in a
highly individual way. Riffo uses this type of juxtaposition throughout her work mixing
references and processes from different fields, such as laboratory process overlaid on
traditional drawings; simple photographic process on divinatory object; or mixing fictional
artefacts to real situations. This approach extends to the exhibition title, Elastic Stress,
which is taken from the description of the phenomenon when a physical state of a material
is transformed by pressure or stress. For her this process could also be referring to “a
bouncy and stretchable mental nervousness.”

   Within this exhibition Riffo has begun from her own visual experience, engaging its
fallibilities, uncertainties and errors. As we move through the gallery objects shift in
appearance. This is more than visual trickery but is suggestive of an understanding of
subjectivity that can be applicable within all of an individual interactions.

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   Elsewhere Riffo has made scans of mirrors, a poetic limitation of the mirror being a device for perfect reflection. In the resulting prints the mirror is a black void, an infinite loop of image and information. This deadening of an image through an excess of information can also be seen to relate to the social and cultural practices associated with the black mirror within necromancy or divination. In such cases the mirror is not merely a representation of the world but is a means to transcend this physical dimension. In this installation for Skaftfell Riffo has made the visitor experience more complex, and as a testing ground for the interaction of psychological and physical space. For her she hopes it will “reveal alternative aspects of our reality when materials are under some kind of invisible pressure.”

G.Morrison