Claire Grant

Claire Grant worked in aviation for over a decade. Up in the Air surveys her unique perspective as a flight attendant, flying throughout the major upheavals of the COVID-19 pandemic. She takes inspiration from the aerial viewpoint and restricted perspectives observed in-flight.

An aisle of plane-windows evoke gazing out at the landscape 25,000ft below. Skies filled with blueprints of flight navigation charts form abstracted vignettes of Australian destinations. Ominous text has crept off the departures board, reflecting our collective uncertainty. Everything feels Up in the Air.

Stretched taut and suspended by harsh metal fixtures, Grant’s pre-employment dental x-ray gives us a playful smile/grimace, revealing a dark reality beneath the omnipresent face mask.

Photographed en route over an outback mine, the large-scale composite panoglitch purposefully exploits the iPhone camera’s technical limitations, resulting in pixelated motion blurs and repetitive glitches. Translated from digital to analog, the expansive aerial view sweeps across multiple sheets of fragile paper ephemera, carefully hand printed in cyanotype. Each printout contains a detailed itinerary of routes the artist flew over the past year. These crew briefings, kept neatly folded in her pocket each day, capture a timely self-portrait of life as a regional flight attendant.