Miss Titus Becomes A Regular Army Mac

I am very pleased to announce that I will be releasing my new project, "Miss Titus Becomes A Regular Army Mac" at the Unseen Photo Fair in September! Working on a collaborative project with Kummer & Herrman and using source material from the wonderful archive of Brad Feuerhelm a new publication is to be made, and more news to follow shortly.

Here is a little excerpt about what the project is about;

"Faced with the enormity of an archive full of imagery, dissecting and assembling into curated narratives brings forth a wealth of possibilities. This body of work brings together a curated account around representations of women within 19^th & 20^th century photography through the unusual viewpoint of the backs of the images.

In the era of, the abundance of imagery, what really constitutes ‘seeing’ and ‘looking.’ Do we really see with our eyes or with the preconditioned ideals and stereotypes that make up contemporary society, our culture? When presented with the back of an image that one cannot view (in the traditional sense), that one is not used to looking at, we must then find and decipher the new codes available to us. The imperfect marks, the traces left behind by another, the notes, numbers and language lingering. Is it possible to read an image only from the information supplied on first glance or do we automatically go back to our ingrained knowledge bound with our perception to ‘understand’?"

It's going to be quite a project, so keep watching for more updates and information about the launch.

Blow Magazine - Issue Eight

New editorial out now, issue 8 of Dublin's Blow Magazine! It is a really beautifully printed A3 magazine, a real tactile publication. Here is a little excerpt of this theme for the current issue, 

"History doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes and with this in mind we introduce the theme of ‘new pictorialism’. New implies old, and any photography student will affirm that pictorialism holds a hallowed position at the very beginning of photographic history. consider that the visual art world during the late 19th century was questioning photography as a legitimate art form, a time when artistic intervention of the photographic process was relatively limited. the response was pictorialism. it extended the artistic process by referencing paintings in its subject matter and composition. practically, this meant creative manipulation of the image using the tools available; lenses, colours and dyes. the idea was to make rather than take photographs."

Read MORE HERE: http://www.blowphotomagazine.com/issues/issue-eight/

New Distributor - Rose Gallery in LA

I am very, very pleased and proud to announce that my book "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" is now available at Rose Gallery in LA. It is a pleasure to be working with the gallery, as they represent some truly inspirational and very important artists as well as having a stunning range of books.

See here to view more: http://www.rosegallery.net/index.php#mi=1&pt=0&pi=1&s=0&p=-1&a=-1&at=-1

Visions of the Universe

This week saw the start and finish of my first experiment for the Autobiographical Memory study, using a camera to record events in my day and what I remember and recall. So with this in mind, I decided to curate a week of events that I would normally do into a shorter, condensed period of time. So I decided to make sure that I visited some exhibitions that I had been meaning to see.

A day trip off to Greenwich sent me to the wonderfully ore inspiring exhibition, "Visions of the Universe" at the National Maritime Museum. Now, usually an exhibition about Science wouldn't get me so excited but this show is quite literally something else. As you wonder around the darkened exhibition, astounding images present themselves, showing you the world outside of us, above and beyond us and our perception. The imagery is quite unbelievable as you see the first ever images of the sun and moon as well as the "Transit of Venus" intermixed with abstract images of Galaxies and Nebulas. In addition a wonderful surprise collection of photographs by my favourite artist of all time, Mr Wolfgang Tillmans with his photographs of the "Transit of Venus" beautiful and sensitively taken, a piece of stunning work, intertwined with Science, what a combination!

These abstracted forms, these images that exist to show us these take you on a journey into a space you know nothing of and can't quite understand nor truly comprehend as its so many millions of years away. But seeing this exhibition really got me thinking about this notion of 'seeing' and what it really means.    

What really resinated with me while walking through this exhibition was how the abstracted imagery, or so what it seemed, of the Nebulas and Galaxies really had such a direct link to the abstracted, damaged negatives that I have found in the Beijing Silvermine project that I am collaborating on. There decay, unbelievable colours and textual foundations could almost be taken for being images from space and this link between incomprehension and inspiration rang so true to me with this body of work. I feel a link between the two is certainly an investigation to pursue.

See more about the exhibition here: http://www.rmg.co.uk/visit/events/visions-of-the-universe 

The Constructed View: UK Photography Now - Dong Gang Museum of Photography, South Korea

I am very pleased to announce that I will be participating in the 12th Dong Gang International Photo Festival in South Korea in a very special exhibition, "The Constructed View: UK Photography Now" at the Dong Gang Museum of Photography. The exhibition opens on the 19th July and continues until the 22nd of September.

With artists like Mishka Henner, Cristina De Middel, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Tom Hunter and Esther Teichmann to name but a few, the exhibition will really show a decade of constructed photography in all its forms in a wonderful museum, it's a pleasure to be involved.

See here for more information: http://www.dgphotofestival.com/eng/exhibit/?m=10

Louis Vuitton - New Bond Street Maison Librairie

I am very, very, very proud to announce that I am now working with Louis Vuitton at their New Bond Street Maison in the Librairie, as they represent the Special Editions of "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" alongside one of the unique photomontages from the series.

The New Bond Street Maison Librairie is, "a unique cultural concept within a retail store. This specialist area on the first floor, with its sky lit vaulted ceiling, is a peaceful haven conducive to browsing the superbly crafted and extremely limited edition books within, many of which are collectible works by well known British artists."

It's a truly amazing space and I am honored to be positioned between Terence Donovan, Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry, amoung many, many other astounding British artists that are part of the Librairie. 

(Store front and long shot interior images courtesy of Louis Vuitton 2013.)

Adam Curtis V Massive Attack

This weekend I headed up to the Manchester International Festival to see what can only be described as a sensory overload of inspiration and information as I watched Adam Curtis V Massive Attack at the Mayfield Depot, an abandoned train depot behind Piccadilly Station. 

Described in Curtis' words as,  "a collaboration between myself and the brilliant Robert del Naja of Massive Attack. The best way we can describe it is "a Gilm" - a new way of integrating a gig with a film that has a powerful overall narrative and emotional individual stories."

Curtis goes on to describe, "The show will be a bit of a total experience. You will be surrounded by all kinds of images and sounds. But it is also about ideas. It tells a story about how a new system of power has risen up in the modern world to manage and control us. A rigid and static system that has found in those images and sounds a way of enveloping us in a thin two-dimensional version of the past."

And what a total experience it was. Surrounded by 11 enormous projections, you become enveloped by the imagery being pumped into the space, watching as the quick succession of editing, intermixed with words played out a theory of power. As the images bombarded your visionary perception from every angle, even on the periphery this was only heightened sensorily as Massive Attack accompanied the visuals with sound. Sounds so intense you felt it right through you to the core, often on the edge of being unbearable in volume, pushing you harder and harder into the two-dimensional world. 

Above is the trailer they released about the experience, but to be honest, the experience was something quite unbelievable and unexplainable. I can still feel the bass in my heart and the weight of the words in my minds eye, absolutely extraordinary! Thank you. 

http://www.mif.co.uk/event/massive-attack-v-adam-curtis

13213

In confusion comes much clarification. This project is simply that. A physical record of the fire and flood that destroyed my studio earlier this year. I am just working on finalising the imagery, but it's a small and straight document on what was found, created from the destruction, when the walls and ceiling poured with water and the fire took hold. 

More to come, but the results are such beautiful, abstracted imagery, astounding in their detail - exciting times it would seem right now!

New Experiment, New Research

Yesterday saw another afternoon spent working with the School of Arts and Social Sciences, in the Memory Research Unit on new experiments and research into new works. Working with a PHD student, I undertook and will be undertaking a weeks long experiment into Autobiographical memory, through the use of photographic imagery, wearing a specialist camera for events during 5 days!

Before that can all start, I had to undertake a Cognitive Test, known as the WASI IQ test and go through some rather interesting and odd tests, measuring for general cognitive ability, crystallized abilities, nonverbal fluid abilities as well as visuomotor/coordination. Through the use of Vocabulary, Similarities, Block design and Matrix reasoning testing you can work out the score. 

While under the experiment, I became increasingly intrigued by the use of the blocks and the form in which you use them to recreate a pattern in front of you, timed! This connection between what you see and what you have to recreate is something that really excited me as I thought about it in terms of photography and the very 'act' of looking. 

With the next part of the experiment starting on Monday, I can't wait to see the results and start putting the data together into new works, watch this space....

The Alternative Guide to the Universe

"The Alternative Guide to the Universe explores the work of self-taught artists and architects, fringe physicists and visionary inventors, all of whom offer bracingly unorthodox perspectives on the world we live in. Inspiringly original and bracingly eccentric, their work re-imagines our social and cultural conventions in ways that fearlessly depart from accepted ways of thinking."

This is the current exhibition at the wonderful Hayward Gallery, as I must say I wasn't too sure what to expect, but again the Hayward have curated an unimaginable world, where you as a spectator are thrown into the depths of another time, another place as you wonder through the exhibition. The works are strange, uncanny, unusual, but have a perplexing intrigue that really holds your attention. 

Works ranging from Photography through to Geometry, to installation to painting take you on a journey through the unknown offering up a new reality, a place which we know nothing of and perhaps would be happier in. For the most part of this exhibition I felt as if I was in another world, transfixed by the originality and space created through their vision and in fact I felt as if it was a much safer and better place for me at that very moment. 

Artists' that really struck me where Melvin Edward Nelson with his UFO paintings, A.G Rizzoli with his unbelievable architectural craftsmanship of buildings as figures and the Chinese artist Guo Fengyi with her journey of spiritual and metaphysical significance, drawing figures through her visions. This show is an absolute must!

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/alternative-guide-to-the-universe-exhibition-73950

Works Unseen

As I research many different sources for 2 new projects that I am working on, I recalled a series I produced back in 2008-2009 using the defunct, original Polaroid. The body of work, consisting of only 6 unique Polaroids titled, "View From My View" takes inspiration from the wonderful work of Andre Kertesz and his series of a similar name. The series plays and explores Kertesz's idea of shooting objects in front of the window, in the sunlight on Polaroid but are then interrupted mid process to create these beautifully abstracted instant photographs. 

They capture a time and place,  offering up a new way to see the world, the view, whereby the colours, the shapes, the tones propel you deep into the chemistry, into a world unknown. The sublimeness for me, echos the paintings of the early 19th century, a place where you can escape for a moment into something different, a space that takes you wholeheartedly and brings forth emotions strong and hard into the present.

http://www.bulgergallery.com/dynamic/fr_artist.asp?ArtistID=8

Unseen Dummy Award Juror 2013

I am very, very proud and honored to announce that I have been selected as 1 of the Unseen Dummy Award 2013 Jurors at the Unseen Photo Fair in Amsterdam!!!!! I was interviewed earlier this month and you can read all about what I am looking for in a photobook and where and what I think about this beautiful medium. Here's a little except from the interview;

Why do you think photobooks are so important? Do you feel that the push to digitalise material has changed their significance?

"For me, photobooks provide physicality to a project that not only outlives the project, but also the artist. They provide an additional, exciting platform to develop a series of works into a new form, a new life. It’s where the curation of work into book form adds and aids another dimension, and often-in unexpected avenues.

With the push towards digitalisation, there seems to be a push back into the importance of having something tactical, tangible, something to hold dear and hold onto. Photobooks are a way of really capturing the essence of a project at a particular moment in time, where you can sit back, relax and really pour your time into turning the pages at your own pace. I think the significance of this is that with every development comes a yearning for it to pause, so through this digitalised material, the books become more objectified and thought of as objects in their own right, as it is so readily available to produce your own books through online opportunities. I am excited about this development and where it will progress."

See more here: http://www.unseenamsterdam.com/unseen-dummy-award-juror-melinda-gibson 

And here: http://www.dmbcreatives.com/posts/melinda-gibson---unseen-dummy-award-juror/121/1

Read more about Unseen here: http://www.unseenamsterdam.com/news