COMING UP...
MARCH
14 Open Salon 2010 closes, 4pm
18 Masked Ball
Exhibition opens, 9am
27 & 28 Pop-up Photo Booth, 12-4pm, no booking required
APRIL
5 Masked Ball
Exhibition closes, 4pm
8 Family Photographs: Reworked
Exhibition opens, 9am
25 Family Photographs: Reworked
Exhibition closes, 4pm
25 Family Photographs: Reworked Workshop, 2-5pm, free - book soon!
29 Alchemists
Exhibition opens, 9am
29 Alchemists
Opening party, 7-9pm
MAY
9 Poetic Photographs workshop, 2-5pm, free (booking required)
14/15/16 Museums at Night: dance performances in the gallery, 7.30-9.30pm, no booking required
16 Alchemists
Exhibition closes, 4pm
20 Zapatistas
Exhibition opens, 9am
20 Zapatistas
Opening party, 7-9pm - with an introductory presentation from the Mexican Cultural Attache
JUNE
6 Zapatistas
Exhibition closes, 4pm
6 Zapatistas
Workshop and film screening, 2-5pm (free, booking required)
| | |
Alchemists: exhibition in April / May |
29 April to 16 May 2010
Alchemists:
Unusual processes and media
The Viewfinder Photography Gallery presents a group exhibition of photographic images created using alternative techniques, cameras and media. Taking inspiration from painterly approaches, ‘pure’ photography and specialist printing techniques, these photographers challenge the potential ease and speed of producing a digital image, and defy picture-perfect effects in favour of more whimsical and mysterious images.
Catlin Harrison is a Londoner by birth and inclination, who finds that the city provides a fresh helping of eclectic people to watch and wonder about every day. She is fascinated with the human form, especially meta-figures such as ghosts, dolls or archetypes. Her approach is akin to the Victorian collectors’ sensibility - each piece of work is an independent specimen, a set of examples of a particular type. Presence, oddity, beauty and humour are important elements in all of Catlin’s’ work: strange objects in jars, classification, crypts, fashion, botany and medieval European painting are just some of the things that inspire her. The exhibited series came about after buying a collection of dolls at auction, and reflecting on the dubious privilege of once living in one of the most haunted houses in Britain.
 Catlin Harrison
Christophe Dillinger practices what he calls “WYSIWIGOTN” photography, which stands for “What You See Is What I Got on the Negative”. His images are free from digital manipulation and are the result of a single shot. They are a fusion of film-based photography and traditional mark making techniques such as painting and drawing. His photography work features pigments, ink or curry powder, as well as till rolls, sugar paper, receipts, printers’ sample rejects and extracts from technical books. Christophe uses paintbrushes, toothbrushes, charcoal, wax pastels and even sticks, superimposing their textures and graphical dynamism onto classical portraits or local landscapes. Randomness is allowed to seep through the image making process so that photography becomes a game, a discovery for the viewer as well as the photographer.
Christophe Dillinger
Jo Mills is fascinated by the worlds of the real and the unreal, and the places in which they meet and overlap, such as the mirror. She explores the ‘mirror world’ where nothing is as it seems, and where nothing can exist without its polar opposite – light and dark, tragedy and beauty, creation and devastation. In fairytales, myths, legends and gothic literature the idea of the 'looking glass world', where nothing is what it seems, is deeply rooted: the beautiful can be deadly, humans can fly, and anything is possible. Her photographic practice stems from this, as she aims to create immersive spaces for the spectator to interact with and explore, or which hint at the unknown space beyond. Jo's photographs are particularly influenced by the surrealist movement, play and the uncanny.
Jo Mills
Marysia Lachowicz presents 'Shifting Tides', an ongoing series of work about the coast. The exhibited images were all taken during coastal walks in East Fife, Scotland. This area includes picturesque villages, craggy outcrops and rock pools, as well as long stretches of sand. Marysia has captured the changing nature of the villages and continues to document the coastline both in colour and in black and white. She feels that the tactile nature of liquid emulsions and early photographic techniques bring out the history and physical nature of this environment by producing an often imperfect but unique image. Some of the processes Marysia utilises involve salt prints, cyanotypes and using liquid emulsion.
Marysia Lachowicz
Nicolas Gonzalez creates abstract images using light within a photograph. The impressionistic portraits are ‘painted’ straight onto the film using coloured lights and extremely long exposures. Nicolas is interested in exploring the texture, intensity and movement of the light in the image, and in creating a painterly effect.
Nicolas Gonzalez
For David Rann, alternative photographic printing processes like Gum Bichromate and Cyanotype are an occasional but welcome diversion from his day to day photographic work. His first series of Gum prints, 'Know the Place', which depicts details of the Hebridean island of Eigg, has inspired further such projects. David finds the uniqueness and unpredictability of these processes is part of their charm.
David Rann
Curator Louise Forrester comments: "this exhibition focuses on the magical side of photography and on the physical process of creating images - don't miss it!"
[More images are available, please email louise@viewfinder.org.uk for high res images]
|
Accompanying workshop: Poetic Photographs |
Sunday 9 May, 2-5pm
(free, booking essential - email louise@viewfinder.org.uk to reserve
a place)
Poet and photographer Elizabeth Gowing will read the poem she has contributed to the exhibition catalogue, and a selection of other poems relating to the exhibition. Participants will be invited to take their own photographs inspired both by the exhibition and by Elizabeth's poem.
The photographs taken on the day will be uploaded at the gallery and projected, and viewed as a group. Participants can select three of their photographs to be published on a dedicated workshop page on www.viewfinder.org.uk/events Please bring a digital camera and its cable or card reader, or let us know if you'd like to borrow a point-and-shoot camera.
Participants will also be offered the opportunity to mull over the poems for longer, and to email photographs in by 29 May. This option allows for both immediate responses on the day, and more considered responses over the following weeks.
For the results of the pilot 'Poetic Photographs' event, please see www.viewfinder.org.uk/events/special/PoeticPhotographs.html
To see Elizabeth Gowing's work, visit www.elizabethgowing.com
Workshop funded by the Capital Community Foundation and Grassroots Grants.
|
Museums at Night: Dance performances in gallery |
Doors open from 7.30 – 9.30pm, on Friday 14, Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 May 2010. Free, no booking required.
Following the success of the ‘Picture the Moment’ performance in 2009 (www.viewfinder.org.uk/exhibitions/Previous/PictureTheMoment.html#performance), the Viewfinder will again be hosting three evenings of dance in the gallery.
Part of Museums at Night, there will be live performance and short films curated and performed by local artists, sharing an exploration of private histories and home.
“I want rooms where rituals have taken place and memories have accreted and left ineradicable impressions”
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
|
|
Recent press releases and listings information |
All recent press releases (one per exhibition) can be found here:
Listings information (up to October 2010) can be found here:
Key press coverage is displayed in the gallery and listed here:
We would greatly appreciate it if you could email louise@viewfinder.org.uk with a pdf of any coverage, or the date and issue the feature will appear in, or a link to the relevant web page. Many thanks! |
Venue: Viewfinder Photography Gallery, Linear House, Peyton Place, off Royal Hill, Greenwich, London SE10 8RS
Opening times: Mon - Fri 9am-5pm; Sat, Sun & bank holidays 12-4pm
Admission: free
Transport: Greenwich (DLR and Rail, 8 mins from London Bridge); Cutty Sark for Maritime Greenwich (DLR)
Contact details for publication:
gallery@viewfinder.org.uk
020 8858 8351, ext. 2
www.viewfinder.org.uk
The curator and photographers are available for interview.
The Viewfinder Photography Gallery is a charitable company in Greenwich that hosted its first exhibition in 2005.
Awards:
2009 Awards: Finalist in Community, Customer Service and Diversity awards (TGBA) • Finalist in Small Environmental Business of the Year (Archant London Environmental Awards).
2008 Awards: Finalist in Best use of Science or Technology, Sustainable Business of the Year and Diversity in Business (TGBA) • Finalist in Environmental Business of the Year (Archant London Environmental Awards).
Viewfinder on Twitter:
|
|
Do more with this press release |
| |
