The work is comprised of layers from 2 previous artworks created by the artist. The first painted image was created on a large panel with acrylic paint. The second layered digital image appropriated the romantic landscape by Albert Bierstadt, ‘Among the Sierra Nevada, California, which was digitally fragmented and distorted. The romantics motivations and inspiration from the philosophical concept of the sublime are relevant to the artists interests. Together these layered images present a dystopian vista representing the archetype of the apocalypse and its impact.
In this work the artist has appropriated from and manipulated the Sebastian Ricci painting, ‘The Resurrection’ (1716). The artist’s process of distorting religious and familiar historical art symbolises the impact of the enlightenment, the response of romanticism and the sublime and recently the technological digital revolution and the contemporary sublime. The stages of the archetype of the apocalypse, judgement, revelation, punishment and rebirth are represented in this work. The fragmented and fractured Baroque religious painting is a metaphor for the artist’s encounter with the archetype of the apocalypse where reality shifts and past beliefs are necessarily reframed. The content and subject matter of the original painting are relevant to the artist’s expression of this existential experience, also perceived as a collective event.
Complex issues of time and space are considered in this work addressing the concept of the limitless and unfathomable sublime. The same figure is placed in two locations, facing opposing directions, intimating the quantum physics theory of an atom existing in two places at once, questioning reality and the existence of the incomprehensible. The impact of the past and present are depicted by the process of appropriating from previous work that was originally an appropriation from historical art. Paradoxical repercussions and reverberations are a theme that resurfaces frequently in Brigg’s process and is apparent in this digital piece. Layers from previous digital manipulations and physical interpretations of ‘The Last Judgement’ and ‘Serenade’ indicate a convergence of the archetype of the apocalypse and the impact of the digital technological revolution. The desire to escape from the instability and confusion of the environment is expressed and illustrated in the abient running figure.