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Dialogue - Review
Mat Collishaw show at the BFI Gallery
Two reviews of Mat Collishaw's new commission at the BFI
Posted: Mar 11 2010 | More...
Dialogue - Review
Gavin Turk, Jake Chapman and Piers Secunda in show at Zero10 Gallery
Two reviews of Zero10's current exhibition
Posted: Mar 10 2010 | More...
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This weeks talks, shows and events to do with contemporary art
Posted: Mar 09 2010 | More...
Dialogue - Review
Green Hill Zone at Hannah Barry Gallery
Sonic the hedgehog hits Peckham
Posted: Mar 05 2010 | More...
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Collier Schorr at Stuart Shave/Modern Art
Two reviews of the photographer's latest exhibition
Posted: Mar 03 2010 | More...
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Frances Young, Sites of Transition
Video installation at Madder 139 Gallery
Posted: Mar 02 2010 | More...
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Feast your eyes: details of the week's best shows and talks in London
Posted: Mar 01 2010 | More...
Dialogue - Review
Ron Arad: Restless at Barbican Art Gallery
Agnieszka Gratza and Ana Vukadin visit Barbican Art Gallery's latest show
Posted: Feb 26 2010 | More...
Dialogue - Video
The artist talks to Hannah Forbes Black about her practice
Posted: Feb 25 2010 | More...
Dialogue - Review
Tim Howard and Zoe Troughton review the Vyner street show
Posted: Feb 23 2010 | More...
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New showroom, work from 20 artists inc Adam Thompson, David A Smith, Adam Bainbridge, Gareth Cadwallader showing upstairs 20 Hoxton Sq now
Eloise Donnelly
Lost in Transit showcases the work of 13 emerging artists in what is the culmination of a nine month collaborative project consisting of preliminary workshops through to production, curation and even the hang. Drawing parallels with The Distance Between exhibition at the Pebbledash Gallery earlier this month, also part of the Photomonth festival, the show considers both temporal and geographical transition, and focuses on themes of change and adaptation.
Despite the artists working so closely together over this period of time, the first thing that strikes you upon entering the gallery is the diversity of responses to this one theme.
Bella Ward's Polaroids, taken over six months on journeys on public transport, convincingly articulated photography's unique ability to capture this theme of transition. Depicting the view as she looks out of the window, the details of her surroundings are lost and we are left with a delicate impression of her experience of travel frozen instantly within the frame. With Polaroid film now out of production, the physical images are themselves stuck in a particular moment in time.
A more sinister consideration of the theme was taken by Murray Ballard, whose stunning images taken in a cryonics facility outside Moscow powerfully convey the chilling geographical, scientific and psychological atmosphere. It was the fine details in these images that really disturbed: the gaudy vibrancy of artificial flowers within an otherwise monochrome graveyard; the inclusion of a photograph of emperor penguins on the wall of the facility canteen; the portrait of the cryogenics scientist surrounded by domestic paraphernalia hanging above an image of a cryonically frozen rat.
Exploration of the evolution of identity played a strong theme within the exhibition, with Helen Warburton's images of a mother and daughter considering the fluidity of filial relationships, while Roxana Allison's images of Britain and Mexico meditated on the complex changing identity of migrants. As the viewer is unaware of the provenance of each image, shapes and forms are resonated in different locations and the seemingly fixed identities of the two nationalities become blurred.
A concern with collaborative shows such as this one is that with each artists pursuing their own projects attempt to shoehorn seemingly unrelated projects into the theme, resulting in a disjointed exhibition with no clear curatorial voice. Yet in Lost in Transit, the sheer variety of responses became a strength, rather than a weakness. It is rare to see such a variety of photographic techniques and traditions explored in the same exhibition, from Nineteenth Century albumen Cartes de Visite to blurred Polaroids and digitally enhanced images. The display showcased a medium in transition, and in this way is a fitting tribute to the medium of photography - itself the result of the fleeting action of light waves hitting paper, a transitory moment.
Florence Mackenzie
The title of this exhibition, Lost in Transit, brings to mind big corporations, institutions and bureaucracy. Those three words you find stamped in red on a letter of apology for merchandise that's disappeared during transportation. Yet the subject matter for these 13 photographers is the human being and the transience of life - losing ourselves, losing each other, metaphorically and physically.
In four haunting black and white images, Christopher Nunn explores memory, and how those elements of the past that we forget are later replaced by fictions and fantasies. Anonymous, empty rooms illuminated by natural light filtering through windows become kafkaesque chambers of the mind abound with suppressed fears and regrets.
John Cuttriss looks to the memory of his childhood and offers up a playful narrative entitled The Milkman's Horse, for which he has juxtaposed eery, colour-saturated photos of his home with delicate drawings and a letter from his mum.
Geographical dislocation is present in the work of British-Mexican Roxana Allison, who examines the sense of cultural identity loss arising from dual nationality. What is lost of the self through emigration? Allison doesn't offer answers. Instead her poignant snapshots of her two 'homelands' - empty car parks and playgrounds, damp ceilings and cloudy skies - create a foreboding, uncomfortable atmosphere, making her feelings of disorientation palpable.
The final, absolute loss is of course life itself. Mortality is a major theme here. One of the most bold pieces is Debbie Harman's Post 47, a series of images of a place on the M62 where she had a serious car accident. Though her fear is omnipresent in the portrayals of the blurred car headlights and the looming lorries, so too is her courage, for the photographs reflect an acknowledgment of her own vulnerability.
Murray Ballard also unashamedly looks death in the face, but with a light, sci-fi sense of irony and humour. The Prospect of Immortality looks at cryonics, the scientific practice of freezing corpses in the hope of possible future 're-animation'. A desolate graveyard features alongside a close-up of a rat's body in a vat of tubes and potions, prophetic of some coming world where the dead don't sleep, they merely doze.
Part of London's Photomonth festival, this exhibition showcases a group of talented UK-based photographers. The ambiguity of the title, Lost In Transit, has produced a wide range of interpretations, such that, curatorially-speaking, there are some jarring contrasts in style and subject matter. However, the artists have not shied away from philosophical and existential questions. They offer a compelling display of work, addressing themes pertinent today in this world where globalisation and climate change have exaggerated our feelings about ephemerality and loss.
Lost in Transit is at Vyner Street Gallery from Tuesday 24th November to Thursday 3rd December as a part of London's Photomonth festival