Andrew Barrow Photography

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Posts in Exhibition Reviews
Fabric of Photography Exhibition

I was delighted yesterday to have viewed and recorded the Fabric of Photography exhibition in Oxford. This multi-artist exhibition was organised and curated by the highly talented Megan Ringrose. It is a fascinating collection of work using alternative processes from 12 different practitioners. If you have any interest in photography or art in general I highly recommend a visit.

Head to the Old Fire Station near the bus station in central Oxford. The Fabric of Photography Exhibition is running until the 13th October 2021. Further details on the show with links to each of the artists can be seen at https://www.fabricofphotography.com/

The exhibition focuses on the work of contemporary photographic artists who are increasingly inspired by the pioneering historical processes and physicality of photography. These artists strip back photography to its absolute fundamental elements: material, light, and process. They explore the ‘thingness’ of photography.

The exhibition brings together artists who are interested in the fundamentals of photography especially with regards to historical methods and thinking about photography within a fine art context. They explore the materiality of the photograph through experimentation with analogue photographic techniques in particular. They are mindful of material redundancy and the need to reconnect to old processes to create new contemporary works.

(Un)Framing Our Identities Exhibition

I believe it is still up and viewable - but not for much longer! It is worth visiting Blackpool simply for this exhibition and the excellent cafe underneath. The RPS (Un)framing Our Identities photographic exhibition was showing on two floors of the ‘industrial’ style gallery space when I visited. Below a few images…

There are so many stories here, from the homeless displayed along the edge of the entrance stairs, to the humour of the Hidden Mother project through to the ‘hidden’ Arab servants and on to the street photos of punks from one of Blackpool’s many festivals and the nature of fluid identities. A personal tour to uncover the stories from the photographs and the details of the female photographers behind them is recommended.

The exhibition showcases over 60 female photographers detailing “themes of female representation within music, connecting identity through nature, the transition from girlhood to adulthood, loss and so much more”.

The Paper Light Process

The Paper Light Process – Exhibition by Megan Ringrose A pop-up exhibition 25th-27th July 2019

The upper gallery was almost overwhelmed by the four large prints. Viewed up close the graduations of tone, a complexity, emphasised the long production times these ‘alternative processed’ images took to create. The lower level showed a grid of 12 smaller prints, benefiting from the great light streaming into the Little Gallery in London’s St. James. The simplicity of keeping the images strictly within the Red, Green and Blue spectrum emphasized the subtle graduations of colour, of the textural qualities of the paper where roughened by folding and creasing.

The larger pieces clearly show the textural undulations from the application of the photosensitive chemicals; similar to a painter’s brush marks, “painting with light” as Tony Hancock once mimicked a photographer, which of course is exactly the process here.

The shapes and forms have a 1930’s Russian abstraction ambience to them; but these are photograms rather than paintings. As Megan writes “This collection of experimental work comes from research and enquiry into the very essence of Photography. Fascinated by the pure elements of photography, #paperlightprocess is inspired by Vilem Flusser’s thoughts on working without a camera/apparatus to find a new freedom within photography.” Despite this wish to be distant from digital photography the restriction to the red, green and blue, the additive primary colours, links to the RGB screens in use every day.

The prints are mounted on aluminium then framed. As the larger prints impressed, especially up-close, the grid display showed, at this scale, the work is perhaps best viewed as a set. And a fantastic set to boot.