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This brief but tantalising exhibition featuring seven photographers with a connection to the Nottinghamshire area, each take different pathways to explore the themes of light, love and danger - the culmination of their efforts geared towards the chance of being chosen for a solo show at the same venue next year. Every theme taken on by each artist is treated seriously and given expression through careful thought and treatment that belies the youth of several of the participants. They are as destitute as the Chatsworth photographs along with their swollen light. Continuing in a darker vein, Roshana Rubin-Mayhew takes the subject matter a little further, with a group of pictures bulldog-clipped to the wall like hospitals X-rays, and you know from the doctor's face that it's not good news. Returning to the soil is David Severn, whose portraits of the people reclaiming the land abandoned by the coal industry in the 80s in North Nottinghamshire show as much social honesty as it does artistic merit. Next, Emily Macinnes' portraits of three Kurdish refugees in Nottingham, young and old, either engaging with or avoiding the camera's gaze, full length or nearby, the only theme something indefinable, three people separated from their homeland, families and culture, but still living. The theme is continued in the selection made by Calum James Crowther, in which a reversed aesthetic plays the same role, this time the story is told by the scenery, empty of players who seem to have just left, unused glasses sitting on a table, 60s whiskey bottles (painstakingly re-created by the artist himself) left on their sides, as the people themselves bury their pain offstage. Finally Felicia Staub, who specialises in lith printing, a process that uses black and white photographic paper with lithographic developer to accentuate the shadows and light and bring a dream-like quality to her subject matter. It'll be too close to call about how should win but they all deserve to be seen and appreciated - remember to put a couple of quid in the donation bowl too. |
Friday, 11 May 2012
Photography Open 2012
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