WORK, REST AND PLAY: BRITISH PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE 1960S TO TODAY
Touring Exhibition: OCT Loft, Shenzhen China
The Photographers’ Gallery, London in collaboration with The Pin Projects, Beijing OCT-LOFT, Shenzhen and with support from the British Council present Work, Rest and Play: British Photography from the 1960s to Today. Featured as part of the 2015 UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange, this will be the first touring exhibition in China solely devoted to British photography.
This exhibition presents a survey of over fifty years of British photography through the lens of documentary practices. Featuring work by some of the most significant photographers and artists of the time, it reflects photography’s growing cultural position both within the UK and on the international stage.
Work, Rest and Play features over 450 images by thirty-seven acclaimed photographers and artists working across a wide range of genres and disciplines, including photojournalism, portraiture, fashion and fine art. Arranged chronologically the exhibition explores British society through changing national characteristics, attitudes and activities over the last five decades. Multiculturalism, consumerism, political protest, post-industrialisation, national traditions, the class system and everyday life all emerge under the broader themes of Work, Rest and Play.
Working life finds expression and contrast through Philip Jones Griffiths’ photographs of Welsh miners in the 50s Anna Fox’s study of London office life in the 80s and Toby Glanville’s portraits of workers in rural Britain in the late 90s; Rest is depicted through landscapes and portraits of the British seaside from photographers including John Hinde, Fay Godwin and Simon Roberts; while Play features humour and the rise of popular culture realised in Martin Parr’s colourful chronicles as well as Derek Ridgers explorations of subcultures and Terence Donovan’s definitive images of British fashion.
Additional works included in this exhibition are by Shirley Baker, James Barnor, Cecil Beaton, Jane Bown, Vanley Burke, Jason Evans, Julian Germain, Stephen Gill, Dryden Goodwin, Tom Hunter, Harry Jacobs, Tony Ray Jones, Karen Knorr, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Melanie Manchot, Linda McCartney, Spencer Murphy, Mark Neville, Nigel Shafran, Paul Seawright, David Spero, Clare Strand, Jon Tonks, Lorenzo Vitturi, Tim Walker, Patrick Ward, Tom Wood and Catherine Yass.
The exhibition will continue to tour to Beijing and Shanghai at dates to be announced.
To coincide with the upcoming General Election, Photofusion are pleased to present The Election Project by Simon Roberts.
9 April – 22 May 2015
LAUNCH PARTY
Thursday 16 April, 18.30 – 21.00
In 2010, Roberts was selected as the official British Election Artist, an appointment made by the House of Commons and commissioned by the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art, to create an historic record of the UK General Election. Simon was the first photographic artist to be chosen.
Roberts’ exhibition at Photofusion will feature a selection of the large-format colour tableaux photographs from the final 25 images that form the project in its entirety, each having represented a day spent on the campaign (plus a final image capturing an extra day focused on the coalition talks).
As an antithetic yet complementary accompaniment to the work, Roberts also encouraged public participation in the project. He invited people to visually express their opinions on the campaign by uploading their own photographs to a special website created for the purpose (www.theelectionproject.co.uk).
A selection of the 1,696 images submitted will be presented on a monitor within the gallery and Photofusion will set up a live twitter feed for the public to add their 2015 election photographs under the hashtag #theelectionproject.
Simon will be doing an in-conversation at the gallery with Paul Halliday on Tuesday 12 May, 19.00
Download a press release here
Image: ‘Penri James, Plaid Cymru, Aberwyswyth, 24th April 2010’ from The Election Project by Simon Roberts/ courtesy of Parliamentary Art Collection
Photofusion is grateful to the Parliamentary Art Collection who kindly loaned the works for exhibition.
Landscapes of Innocence and Experience surveys a number of recent bodies of work by British photographic artist Simon Roberts (b. 1974). The exhibition begins with a single image from Roberts’ Motherland series, an expansive social documentary project photographed across Russia between 2004 and 2005. This image marks a catalyst for Roberts and leads to over a selection of photographs taken in Britain since Roberts returned there with a renewed interest in photographing his homeland.
The exhibition weaves through various series including We English, The Election Project, XXX Olympiad and Pierdom. Brought together in the UK for the first time, the works demonstrate a sustained photographic investigation by Roberts into the terrain and shorelines of his native country. The works picture the social practices and customs, cultural landmarks, economic and political theatre that define the space as uniquely British.
Alongside his photographs, Roberts is also screening a 3-channel video which records a journey he made around the country during the official four-week period of campaigning for the 2010 General Election. The film goes in search of incidental spaces and moments across Britain’s urban and rural landscapes set against a soundtrack of ambient noise and radio news bulletins. Juxtaposed alongside the large format landscape photographs, When did you last cry? explores the shifting perceptions of the country’s economic and political geography, with its many anxieties; a rediscovery and revaluation of where we find ourselves today.
The exhibition is realised in collaboration with Flowers Gallery, London.
The Verey Gallery, funded by Sir David and Emma Verey, opened in 2011 as a space to exhibit the remarkable collection of art, manuscripts, rare books, silver, photography and antiquities built up over 500 years by Eton College. It also enables the School to make links with the art world through temporary exhibitions curated by visiting curators and showing loaned art works.
If you have any queries, or would like to visit the gallery please contact Charlotte Villiers, Exhibitions & Outreach Coordinator.
Tel: 01753 671123 Email: [email protected]
The exhibition ‘Human Nature: 15 years of Art Collection Deutsche Börse’ opens at NRW-Forum on 30 January until 19 April 2015 and includes prints from my Motherland series.
“Human Nature” shows artistic positions that deal with the relationship between man and nature. These are presented photographically in a diversity of landscapes. The presentation of nature far away from civilization and the man-made changes in landscape are discussed, as well as the adaptation of man to his self-created environment.
with works by
Paul Almasy
Sonja Braas
Mike Brodie
Joachim Brohm
Balthasar Burkhard
Gerd Danigel
Bruce Davidson
John Davies
Geert Goiris
Evelyn Hofer
Axel Hütte
Martin Liebscher
Vivian Maier
Richard Mosse
Jürgen Nefzger
Simon Norfolk
Regine Petersen
Simon Roberts
Sebastiao Salgado
Pentti Sammallahti
Jörg Sasse
Alfred Seiland
Gunnar Smoliansky
Joel Sternfeld
Image: ‘Walkabout For Our Musketeers, Lausanne, 2014’ pigment print, 50 x 60 cm
Galerie Heinzer Reszler will be exhibiting prints from my series, The Last Moment.
Prints from the series will also be available to view in their booth at Art Geneve from 29/01 – 01/02/2015. Details here: http://artgeneve.ch/en
A selection of prints from We English are included in this new group show at Klompching Gallery, New York.
Also included are works by John Blakemore, Tessa Bunney, Odette England, Doug Keyes, Brad Moore, Lisa M. Robinson and Helen Sear.
I will be participating in the 40th Anniversary edition of the annual Small is Beautiful exhibition, which will take place at Flowers Gallery, New York for the first time this year. The show challenges contemporary artists working in all media to produce works with a fixed economy of scale, each piece measuring no larger than 9 x 7 inches. On display will be over 140 works by an international roster of gallery artists and invited guests.
NOVEMBER 20, 2014 – JANUARY 10, 2015
OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20, 6-8PM
Prints from my Motherland series are included in the exhibition ‘Human Nature: 15 years of Art Collection Deutsche Börse’ (see installation shot above).
This year Deutsche Börse will have been collecting contemporary photography for fifteen years. For this reason we will show a big anniversary exhibition in our premises from 1 October. The exhibition “Human Nature. 15 years of Art Collection Deutsche Börse ” will present around 125 works by 24 artists of the collection.
The show will tour to the NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf end of January and thus be shown in a great public exhibition space as part of the Düsseldorf Photo Weekend and until April.
For more information about the collection, visit: https://www.facebook.com/ArtCollectionDeutscheBoerse
In addition to the permanent exhibition of the Art Collection Deutsche Börse, special events on the subject of photography are hosted regularly at the company’s headquarters, The Cube, in Eschborn, Germany.
Photo: Installation of ‘Eastbourne Pier, East Sussex, 2011’, Towner Gallery, September 2014
My Eastbourne Pier print, recently acquired by Towner Gallery, is part of their new group exhibition Land and Sea.
Land and Sea: A selection of new acquisitions and existing works from the permanent collection. The display will tie in with Twixt Two Worlds and will focus on works that use film and photography in their depiction of sea and landscapes.
This display will include the first showing of our new acquisition by Swiss artist Uriel Orlow, his installation work The Short and the Long of It (2010). We will also be showing our newest acquisition of five works by British artist Matthew Miller and Eastbourne Pier (2011) by Simon Roberts.
This group exhibition featuring a series of my works from Let This Be A Sign, is now touring. The first venue is John Hansard Gallery in Southampton.
Show Me The Money: The Image of Finance 1700 to the Present poses the question, what does money really stand for, and how can ‘the market’ and the world of high finance be made visible? The exhibition charts how the financial world has been imagined in art, illustration, photography and other visual media over the last three centuries in Britain and the United States, and asks how artists have tussled with the intangible nature of money, from the South Sea Bubble of the eighteenth century to the global financial crisis of 2008.
The exhibition features works ranging from satirical eighteenth-century prints by William Hogarth, to newly commissioned pieces by a range of contemporary artists in an array of media: paintings, prints, photographs and videos. Here on the south coast, the exhibition will be shown simultaneously across the John Hansard Gallery and Chawton House Library; the latter once owned by Jane Austen’s brother, himself implicated in a financial scandal of the 1810s.
It showcases many works created since the 2008 financial crash, including Molly Crabapple’s surrealist oil painting Debt and Her Debtors (2012-13), through to Goldin+Senneby’s installation Headless (2008), detailing the search for an offshore company that forms the basis for a ghost-written novel commissioned by the artists. There is a new version of Simon Roberts’ Credit Crunch Lexicon (2012), a wall-based text work that alphabetically lists words and phrases collated from political speeches, Bank of England papers, newspaper headlines and economic reports as a vehicle for political comment.
More information here.