Cathy's Art Diary

One of the better iterations of this annual exhibition at the Photographers’’ Gallery for the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. I have learnt that this is not a straight photography award but also included contemporary art works which have included extensive use of photography. I found all the four shortlisted entries very engaging this year. On the top floor I began with Weronika    Gęsicka constructed images based on "mountweazels" , fictitious encyclopaedia entries inserted as copyright traps as well as fabricated Wikipedia pages. She asks us to question what is real and what is fictitious in these believable images.   Next was Amek   Mahmoodian   “One Hundred and Twenty Minutes” based on the fact that on average we dream for 120 minutes a night. An exile herself, she has asked fellow exiles to share their dreams and work with her to construct images of them in drawings, photographs and words. Down a floor found Rene Matić’s installation of diaristic...

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery showcasing the four finalists in this year’s Deutsche Borse Photography Foundation Prize. I always try to get to this show and this year it felt more connected to photography than some years. On the upper floor there was an installation featuring photographs by Cristina De Middel chronicling a journey along the Central American migrant route. They were interesting images and I love this one of a church but I’d have liked to know more about the people and places. Also upstairs was Rahim Fortune nominated for his photo book “Hardtack” looking at the conflicts and nuances associated with the post-emancipation America. These were lovely black and white images of everyday life. On the floor below was Tarrah Krajnak and I was impressed that, although she is mainly a performance artist, she records her work using photography and prints all her images herself. I particularly liked a series where she photographed her hands holding a ...

Eclectic exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of the shortlisted finalists of this prestigious photography award. The award goes to at outstanding body of work exhibited or published in Europe in the previous 12 months and the show highlights the work of the top four artists. This year featured two artists who had had retrospectives and one of these, VALUE EXPORT, for Austria was showcased with a selection of work by this feminist photographer and performance artist over 5 decades. I’m not sure the work translated very well as static images. Despite being shortlisted for a retrospective Hrair Sarkissian was represented by two works. One was an eerie soundscape recording of exhuming bodies from a Spanish Civil War mass grave but the photographic element was 50 photographs of the empty homes of people who had disappeared in conflict which were very moving. In the floor below I liked Gavin Gill and Rajesh Vangad’s book blending Gill’s photography of India with Vangad’s indige...

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers Gallery showcasing the four shortlisted finalists in this years Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. I always find this show slightly baffling as they seem to take quite a broad definition of photography. I should take it as artists who use photography in contemporary art rather than people who take photographs. Most baffling was Arthur Jafa who the commentary said was looking at how visual media could transmit “the equivalent power, beauty and alienation” embedded in black music. Not sure what that means and feel that music has developed over time where as this is trying to do the same in one moment. I found Bieke Depoorte’s Installation very moving. It documented a chance meeting with a man in Portland, Oregan, who gave her a suitcase of his belongings and disappeared. The installation was a video recording how she tried to find him and find out more about him with the content of the suitcase around the walls. Frida Orupado...

Eclectic exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize for work published or exhibited in the previous 12 months. I always try to get to this show and it can be a bit of a mixed bag. As ever there were four photographers highlighted. I think my favourite was Anastasia Samoylova whose work looked at the environmental crisis in American coastal cities. I loved the abstract shapes created by the damage as in the attached picture. Her work was shown as big bold works against a striking green and purple background. Jo Ratcliffe’s work recorded conflict and dispossession in South Africa and Angola shown in a white room to contrast with the previous works. I would have liked to have been able to read more of the stories that went with this harrowing works. Denna Lawson, who won this year’s prize, showed work which challenged the conventional representation of Black Lives through encounters with strangers and planned scenes. The p...

Thoughtful exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery of the four shortlisted entries for this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2020. I can sometimes find this exhibition a bit strange and leaving me asking about the boundaries between photography, art and documentary but this year I found all of them interesting and, dare I say, beautiful! Mohamed Bourouissa’s images of marginalised people were moving. I particularly like the series of shop lifters, standing in the shops they had stolen from holding up the offending items, usually such simple cheap things. His section was livened up by a Virtual Reality element. You downloaded an app then pointed your phone at pictures on the floor and 3D digital images of people appeared in the room with you. Weird but fun. Most artistic was Clare Strand’s images where she took found black and white photographic images, which she converted into data of light and shade via a grid then translated into a painting based on one square of colou...

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery featuring the four finalists in this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. The competition identifies and rewards innovation an excellence in photography. This is not only for the photographs themselves but also in exhibitions, projects or books by the photographers nominated. Two of the photographers have recorded conflicts. Arwed Messmer showed how pictures used in the investigation of the Red Army Faction in Germany now provide a different insight into the history of this period. OK I admit as I didn’t know this bit of history so the photographs didn’t mean a lot to me and the display didn’t really enlighten me. Having said that I liked the tall pictures of the bookcases in cells. Susan Meiselas was nominated for a retrospective of her work including her ongoing project on Kurdistan. Laia Abril’s work was for a book investigating abortion throughout the world. I found it a hard watch. There were m...

Strange exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery showing the shortlisted winners of this prestigious photography prize.   I say strange because there seemed to be very few photographs for a photography prize! In fact one of the presentations by Luke Willis Thompson was a video installation, albeit a fairly still video! Another by Batia Suter used found images and looked at how images are affected by their context. Rafal Milach did have a bit more original photography and looked at post-soviet propaganda in architecture, urban projects and objects. No I’m not sure I understood it either. My favourite piece was by Mathieu Asselin and looked at the company Monsanto examining the human, ecological and economic impact of its sometimes reckless history. There still wasn’t much photography but what there was did include showing how it had been used eg in newspaper articles as well as having a clear narrative.   Closes 3 Jun2 2018   Reviews Telegraph...

Disappointing exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for the shortlisted nominations for this annual photographic prize. I found most of this year’s shortlisted works slightly self-indulgent recording personal experiences rather than observing life. Awoiska van der Molen’s work was very tranquil and recorded her emotional response to various landscapes. I liked the fact she printed the work by herself so that she was part of the whole creative process but I found the work a bit cold and about her experience not mine. Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs had recorded a road trip from Switzerland to Mongolia drawing on memory and imagination which was displayed as an installation. I wasn’t quite sure how it all hung together and what the narrative was. Most self-indulgent but also oddly most fun was Sophie Calle’s work dealing with the deaths of her parents and cat and looking at the fragility of memory. Who can resist a picture of a cat in a coffin and a taxidermy giraffe he...

Interesting exhibition at the Photographers’  Gallery for the shortlisted entries in this annual photography prize awarded to a photographer for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication format. My favourite section was by Erik Kessels which explored the relationship between him and his father via the work his father did to refurbish a car. He photographed every element of the car and the work done on it including making a new wooden steering wheel. The centre of the display was the part finished car in the state it was in when his father died. The installation looked at memory and loss and was very moving. Laura El-Tantawy’s installation was based on her book of photographs looking at rising tensions in Egypt and consistent of one static screen and others of rolling images. Trevor Paglen, who won the prize, examined mass surveillance and data collection but I admit I didn’t really understand the commentary and how the works hung together. Finally Tobia ...

Annual exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery for this prize which rewards a living photographer for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication. The exhibition showed the work of the four artists on the shortlist. I was very moved by the work of Zanele Muholi who had produced a series of portraits, collated into a book, of gay people in South Africa, looked in particular at the impact of homophobia and violence including the ‘curative rape’ of black gay women. The exhibition had a wall of these photographs which were striking showed them alongside the book and an art work which had invited people from London to transcribe some of the stories in the book onto a banner. I also liked the work of Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse which looked at a high rise block in Johannesburg which had been built of the aspirational middle classes in the 1970s but had become and dilapidated refuge for the urban poor and was now being demolished. They had produced ta...