Photography
Flight
Two works from the series The Distributed Presence of the Natural World are included in the summer salon at Candid Arts in Islington.
The salon runs from 7th to 14th August and is open daily 12-6pm. The Private View is Thursday 6th August 6-9pm.
First Floor Gallery, Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ
The series from which this work is taken is a follow on from Postcard from Another Place and work I have done on identity and the distributed presence.
This image (Untitled) is included in the photography exhibition The Bleached Bones of A Story which is part of Photomonth East London International Photography Festival 2014. The exhibition is on at
Espacio Gallery
159 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 7DG
20th November – 25th November 2014
Daily 1pm-7pm (except Tues 25th; until 5pm)
“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house -the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture- must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”
Inspired by this passage in The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, members of London Independent Photography Central Group have cultivated a theme for their 2014 exhibition at Espacio Gallery.
Two further images which I will be showing in The Bleached Bones of a Story are from the series Postcard From Another Place, a project I began as a post-digital travelogue in 2014.
The components of the images, the bleached bones, have been examined, preserved, accounted for. They are no longer anchored to the place where they were found, but instead, are on loan to the narrative that emerged after taking these journeys to other places.
From the series Postcard From Another Place 2014
I’m very pleased to have work selected for the annual London Independent Photography Exhibition at Embassy Tea Gallery, 195-205 Union Street, London SE1 0LN. The exhibition runs from October 21 until November 02.
London Independent Photography 26th Annual Exhibition
The work selected is from the series Postcard From Another Place.
Isola di San Servolo
Photomonth 2014 takes place in East London in October and November this year. I will be exhibiting with LIP Central Group in a show at Espacio GalleryThe Bleached Bones of a Story November 21-25.
fLIP cover photo: Anne Crabbe
I am very pleased to have two images included in the latest edition of fLIP, the magazine of London Independent Photography. fLIP is published three times a year. The theme of this edition is Connections which figures frequently in my work.
In my ongoing project For the Moment I have introduced those sorts of Connections which take us out of the moment, away from the physical place we are in, to a virtual space. As our tools evolve we find new ways to index our lives virtually. The digital camera in all its formats is a key tool. In For the Moment, I have aimed to incorporate characteristics that the digital medium affords photography in this super-connected world.
fLIP Connections can be purchased at The Photographers’ Gallery Bookshop, National Portrait Gallery Bookshop, Whitechapel Gallery Bookshop, Serpentine Gallery, The Wapping Project Bankside, Artwords, Photofusion, Third Floor Gallery Cardiff, Eastside Books, Brick Lane, London and directly from London Independent Photography.
Along this Path
Along this Path appears in Deep Desires and Broken Dreams photography exhibition (Feb 11-26) at Riverside Studios in conjunction with the Deep Desires and Broken Dreams film festival which runs Feb 20-26.
The work I have chosen to present as part of the group exhibition Slowing Down comes from the series For the Moment. Digital photography is generally associated with speed; the speed with which an image is created, the speed with which it is disseminated. Each image in For the Moment is composed of multiple images shot over a period of time. I have been looking at ways to bring temporal markers to the surface and offer the viewer an opportunity to sense duration in the single image; a seemingly slowing down of the image.
This exhibition features the work of 17 photographers all slowing down …
Mile End Art Pavilion
London Independent Photography
The ability to create tools has been a key factor in the evolution of the human species. This project, For the Moment, emerges from explorations of how we shape our behaviour through the use of our personal technology. With our smartphones in particular, we are able to maintain a presence in the online virtual space regardless of the physical space we inhabit.
Our new technology enables us to connect and share, so no longer do we remain passive consumers of imagery but we actively construct imagery along with words to index our physical existence in the virtual space. We can now easily jump from the physical world to the virtual world through the scan of a code with our phones.
As the use of these new tools becomes normalised we define new social practice. Once, when people gathered together, they shared the same experience. Today in such group situations we will talk to people who are present, but we might also spend some time interacting with others who are not present. We are likely to fragment the time we spend with others by attending to our virtual life and not always being “in the moment” with those around us.
The digital camera in all its formats is a key tool of the new technological era. In making For the Moment I have taken the opportunity to look at some aspects of photography that are changing as a result of the evolving digital medium. This includes time as a characteristic of the photograph, the genre of the tableau in presenting social comment, manipulating digital images and using technology to create multi-media work. With this last aspect I endeavour to bring elements from outside the frame into the work itself.
For the Moment has been on show at Thought Atlas the MA Show 2013 at The Cass.
A new CIF article in The Guardian on Friday 2nd August is entitled How Grindr has transformed users’ experience of intimacy. The author, Senthorun Raj, suggests that Grindr offers the possibilities of organising sex, friendship and relationships with the tap of a screen. But then comes the crunch line “And it’s as anonymous as you want it to be.”
In the currently early days of our post-techno era, behavioural change brought on by our new tools is gradually being researched and documented. Raj talks about the emotional work he puts into his multiple conversations and how he segments them. His use of Grindr, details how in fulfilling the app’s promise of “Right Guy Right Now, Grindr isn’t simply about reaching out to the nearest available Grindrer. No doubt Grindr has transformed the users’ experience of intimacy but perhaps it goes further than that. Grindr and many other similar apps and socialising websites are maybe changing people’s perceptions of intimacy. When identity has to be explicitly communicated in the online environment because of reduced cues, does it matter that we may be sharing intimacies with a multitude of multiple identities? We ourselves may be selective in which identity is doing the sharing.
Whole relationships are experienced within the bandwidth of the world wide web. People meet, become friends, share intimacies and die and eulogies are written, without them ever having shared a physical presence. For some this isn’t virtual, it’s real.
