Bank
Street Arts - "The Motorway Service
Station as a Destination in its Own Right" is here:
and the Sheffield Hallam University students' "Creative Spark" is here:
LINK
Sheffield Hallam.
As always, it was a pleasure to
spend 3-4 hours in the company of fellow students and Andrew Conroy, OCA Tutor,
Photographer in Residence at Bank Street Arts, and curator of the exhibition we
were viewing.
The Motorway Service Station as a
Destination in its Own Right
The inspiration for this exhibition
(and the background to its wordy title) is a pamphlet by poet Simon Armitage,
with the same (not to be repeated!) title.
The work is from 11 photographer/artists (including curator, Andrew),
mainly photographic prints displayed on walls, but including one multi-media
presentation and a pair of books. Andrew
approached a number of photographers, two years ago, with the idea and has
managed the process of bringing the exhibition together in this form. It has been done with limited (if any)
funding of the artists' work; and they have had complete freedom as to how they
respond to the brief and in what form the work has been submitted. Andrew did see some small jpegs in advance,
and the curatorial team has 'edited' the artists' supporting text to manageable
length, as well as, of course, making the 'hanging' decisions. Andrew highlighted some of the pressures of
making such an exhibition happen - not least, opening the work when it arrived
with no real knowledge of what it would comprise.
It worked, for me, as an exploration
of the relationship between a text and visual imagery, but also as an
opportunity to compare the responses of different photographers to this type of
brief. On the whole, I found them to be
quite 'conservative' responses - when compared to the work of some of the SHU
students, for example - and that, in some cases, the depth of creative
engagement was limited, albeit understandable with limited funding.
My most positive response was to
Andrew Robinson's 2 books, 'North' & 'South', which can be seen here - ANDREW ROBINSON.
The books comprise images compiled over a Bank Holiday weekend last
August, as he drove a total of 1000 miles (more or less 50/50 North & South
from Sheffield), stopping at 30+ service stations along the way and recording
his impressions. The book form matches
well with the journey concept, of course, but the editing and presentation also
worked very well. To be totally fair, in a multi-artist exhibition such as
this, with relatively little time to take in context, the 'obviousness' of the
book form response appeals most easily, perhaps; but there is a lesson for any
of us in that and I have to say that the obvious depth and quality of this
particular response was what really stood out for me.
I found Tribble & Mancenido's
contribution more of a challenge. This
is a link to the relevant page on Bank Street Arts' site - LINK - but there is nothing showing the
whole work. They had chosen to respond
with images, or cropped/edited versions of images, from their existing
portfolio, in order as it says on the site to evoke a sense of "...
travel, time, memory and wanderlust"; and create an "... abstract
narrative ..." around an "... imaginary road trip through
memory". There were ten prints (of
consistent colour and style), pinned to the wall, in an order determined by
Andrew and his colleagues. Perhaps the
setting at Bank Street wasn't right for me; perhaps I wasn't in the right frame
of mind (I do often struggle to fully engage with more challenging work in this
type of group viewing); for whatever reason, I found it hard to discover more
than a somewhat superficial appreciation for this work.
There isn't time to write a detailed
reflection on all the artists' work, but they ranged from a single large print
of 20-30 images of the sky, by Jessa Fairbrother - actually a highly personal
response about a journey taken just once, by her mother, from Bristol to
Tibshelf Services, for which the supporting text was essential to appreciating
the work - via some almost typological large-format images of anonymous
service stations - shades of the Bechers or John Davies; to Andrew Conroy's
multi-media work 'The Drive', viewable via 'We Are OCA', HERE.
The latter, I viewed five or six times, on line, before attending the
study visit. It produces a kind of
tension in me, interestingly more so the more I view it. I don't know whether that is intentional, but
I feel a 'clash' between the word-based imagery evoked by Armitage's poem, as
spoken in the background, and the visual images of Andrew's drive. I find it makes me uneasy, and I can't quite
reconcile the two - which may well be intentional. If I simply go with the rhythm and sound of
the poet's voice (with the music, that does kind of bring both aspects
together), then that's find; but if a really listen to what the voice is
telling me, I sense a kind of dissonance between quite strong visual images
evoked in the poem and what I am viewing on the screen. It's a moody and uneasy piece.
We did discuss the mood of the
exhibition overall and it isn't a particularly optimistic one. There seems to be a consensus that the notion
of motorway services evokes a somewhat negative mood in all of us - tedium;
impersonal; necessity over desire; and so on.
Creative Spark @ Sheffield Hallam
This was my first visit to a degree
show, so bound to be useful as a comparator and as a benchmark, quite apart
from the inspiration and information that are always derived from looking at
other peoples' work. One the whole, it
was much as I would have expected. A
wide diversity of approach, subject matter and presentation, as would no doubt
be normal for such a show.
Presentation is probably a good
place to start. The modes ranged from
printing on fabric & hanging as a 3-D presentation (Georgia Mackey - can't
find anything on the Internet & didn't take a picture, but there is an
example of her work here - BOOK LINK), through to a single, 'faded',
self-portrait image printed life-size onto wallpaper (Milly Futter - again no
further info to show on here), which was about 'Conformity' & which worked
well, for me. As well as diversity of
mode, I felt that one could also easily identify a diversity of effort and
engagement - predictably.
The accompanying texts were also
informative to us as 'fellow students'.
One assumes that most of those presenting are in their early twenties,
and the creative energy displayed reflects that; but for many young students,
diverting from that creativity to express what they are doing, through writing,
in a recognisably 'academic' fashion will be understandably difficult - and it
showed, in some cases.
I was surprised by the seeming lack
of engagement with digital techniques; and, truthfully, a little disappointed
by the fact that so many of these young people seemed to be more engaged with
early photographic techniques than with those of the 21st century. Discussing this with Andrew, it emerged that
many, perhaps most, of the students are 'anti-digital', seeing it, perhaps, as
a threat to photography's authenticity and, maybe, to their career
prospects. I don't know enough to say
that this reflects the teaching - though that would be an obvious place to
start - and any proposed explanations are pure conjecture. Is it possible, for
example, that they want to see their photographic work as something different
from the preponderance of digital imagery to which they are subjected day after
day, hour after hour? As I say - it is
conjecture - but I find it surprising and, truthfully, disappointing.
One person's work did strike a chord
with my own current thinking - Katie Sturgess' Simulated Simulacra. She was one of the very few who seemed to
have positively engaged with the digital medium and I like the fact that she is
acknowledging the "crisis of faith in the medium" and looking to
explore it rather than revert to techniques of the past. That's my take on it, anyway!
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