New Images

The images above are new work in process. I am awaiting some negatives back from the lab in the next couple of days, but can show you the sort of imagery which I am experimenting with. These images are a document of the belongings I have of my dearest friend, they have been all acquired from his personal belongings from his room after his death. Each image is a simple, honest document of the object, some presents from me to him, others his own, but all of which I hold very dear. It is very difficult process but something which is also very cathartic.

What's Next

"The Photograph as Contemporary Art" series is now available on What's Next, a new part to the Foam website. It has a great collection of contributors including Erik Kessels, Alec Soth and Fred Ritchin to name but a few, as well as work from me. Keep looking back at the website as new works and contributions appear.

http://www.foam.org/whatsnext

Ambika P3

For this year only the Ambika P3 space will host this years Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. The shortlisted artists are Roe Ethridge (b.1969, USA) nominated for his solo exhibition at Les Recontres d’Arles Photography 2010, France (3 July – 19 September 2010), Thomas Demand (b.1964, Germany) is nominated for his exhibition,Nationalgalerie, at Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (18 September 2009 – 17 January 2010), Jim Goldberg (b.1953, USA) is nominated for his exhibition Open See at The Photographers’ Gallery, London (16 October 2009 – 31 January 2010) and Elad Lassry (b.1977, Israel) is nominated for his exhibition Elad Lassry at Kunsthalle Zürich (13 February – 25 April 2010).

For me, the two in the running are Thomas Demand and Elad Lassry, both use the medium of photography in the most innovative way to document their conception. I have always been a great fan of Demand's but presented with Lassry's , I must admit I am not very familiar with his work, but what I have seen I feel to be incredibly topical as it discusses the use of photography with reference to authorship, appropriation and of course the notion of originality. Once I have seen the show I will of course write a note to say who I feel is the winner, (in my eyes of course.)

Image above: Elad Lassry, Man 071, 2007 © Elad Lassry/ Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Exhibition runs from 5th April - 1st May 2011.

Munuscula

Today I made a start on my new project. This project is an extremely personal one about the death of my dearest friend, who died last year in April. The work will bring together my continuing, ever changing grief in a hopefull and honest way. The process of making such a body of work brings forth many questions, but I am sure that through the use of photography this can and will be a beautiful collection of thoughts and emotions that can bring comfort to such tradegy.

The image above shows the start of a rose wreath that I am making for this project. This was something that has given me comfort throughout my thoughts, as I remember these wreaths being draped over a photograph at his Hindu memorial.

"Munuscula" is the working title in Latin for Little Gifts, this is something that will be slowly revealed in this body of work.

Image copyright Melinda Gibson 2011

Foam - All about Photography

Foam Museum has a new website and one of my images from "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" series is being used for the new Topics Section! It's up now as a beta version, so check it out it's very different from the last one and has much more to look and read about. See here: http://www.foam.org/

Gabriel Orozco

I took a trip to the Tate Modern on sunday with a very good friend of mine to go and see the Gabriel Orzoco exhibition and what an extraordinary show it is. I was completely overwhelmed by the works and found the exhibition beautiful and playfully curated. As you walk through the gallery space, you are met with an unusually unformalist format, where you are actively encouraged to go very close to the objects and in fact many pieces don't have any restrictive cording around them. This in itself was very welcoming and really helped to emphasise the audience participation and interaction with the works.

The works pictured above are some of the pieces that I found very inspirational and touching. To be completely honest the entire show was excellent and I could post every piece up, but you need to see them in their true environment first. The two images above, from left to right are "Jump over, Atomic series 1996", "Solar Graphite, 2006" and the two bottom images are from the series "Polvo Impresso 2002." The bottom two are stunning etchings made from an impression of the lint built up from washing machines in New York, so you see tiny fragments of skin, hair and other traces of human life, they are so beautiful.

If you haven't yet seen the show, this one is a must it is on until 25th April 2010 and read here for more information about the show: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/gabrielorozco/

Uffizi, Hermitage, MOMA, Tate - it's been a journey

Four countries, four museums in just a few seconds, it’s been a journey. This all became possible with the launch of Art Project powered by Google, simply street view in 17 of the world’s most famous museums. You can travel from Italy, to Russia to America and right back to Britain at a touch of a button, getting a 360-degree look inside museum collections. You can even view one chosen piece of artwork, (that is by the museums themselves) microscopically; a term “gigapixel” has been coined to describe this type of resolution. But what will this do, can it help or will it aid a digital generation with yet another excuse not to experience life in all its realism?

For me, I am undecided, only time will tell. But what is sure is that the software needs some work, the images are poor and the collections are rather canonised, no surprise there though. But what is good is that this software will definitively get more people looking at artworks that might never have thought it possible to see MOMA or the Palace of Versailles in their lifetime. Lets see what happens.

Image above is section of "The Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh in MOMA.

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Stezaker at the Whitechapel

The new John Stezaker exhibition opened last weekend at the Whitechapel Gallery, so I wondered down on the opening sunday to take a look. What initially struck me was just how busy the show was, I hadn't anticipated so many people and found myself quite surprised by the turnout. The exhibition is stunning. I have always been a great fan of Stezaker and seen much of his work through his gallery The Approach, but this is quite an experience.

The show brings together over 90 works from 1970 up until the present day and each and everyone is beautifully crafted and offers up the audience new ways of seeing. The Whitechapel explains “His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention.” This series I found to be very inspirational and very good research material when thinking about the notion of the Punctum. For me, these pieces were one of my favorites as well as "Stolen Sky, 1976" and "Sublime, 1987-1998."

If you haven't yet been to the Whitechapel to see this exhibition you must, also there is a great show by welsh artist Betham Huws which is also worth a visit, her textual pieces I found to be very inspiring.“A series of wall texts show Huws’ research into the French idiomatic expressions she has found in the work of Marcel Duchamp, offering both a possible interpretation of his work, and an indirect way of understanding hers.”

Image above, Love XI, 2006, collage. Private Collection, Switzerland. © The Artist.