Exhibited in Ethereality (Everard Read, Cape Town, 2025)
In this series of prints, Ruby Bailey constructs quiet, imagined landscapes through a process of layering, recomposition, and atmospheric refinement. Starting from photographs of the natural world, she reworks the images by softening colour, introducing symbolic elements, and integrating visual fragments drawn from both personal life and the broader visual culture of the present moment.
The works are part of an ongoing body of inquiry Bailey refers to as Ethereality, a space of suspension and stillness, where familiar environments shift into something more speculative and inward-facing. Central to this is the idea of the Digital Pastoral: a contemporary continuation of the sublime and pastoral landscape traditions. These images evoke the vastness and solitude found in historical painting, but are subtly uncanny in their quietness, marked by a notable absence of human presence.
While Bailey uses the tools available in today’s world, including photography and digital editing, the work is not about technology. It is, at its core, a continuation of longstanding artistic concerns: memory, beauty, distance, and emotional atmosphere. The resulting prints invite slow looking and contemplation, offering imagined spaces that feel both timeless and quietly new.
