Exhibition - Act & Application at Lawrie Shabibi
littlewhitehead - Parrot, from the series Our Pleasure, 2013 | Inkjet Print 277 x 270 cm (overall installation) 109 1/8 x 106 1/4
Act & Application at Lawrie Shabibi is a group exhibition that brings together six contemporary artists from around the world: Ra di Martino, littlewhitehead, Arthur Prior, David Rickard, Darren Harvey-Regan and Setareh Shahbazi.
Curated by London based William Lunn, the exhibition offers a selection from the breadth of diverse outcomes that result from artists’ use of photography within a broader multi-media practice.
It's quite a compelling selection of photography - if you are interested in photography that goes beyond the image, beyond the conventional norms, then don't miss this exhibition. It is on till 29th October 2014.
Some of the works from the exhibition:
Ra di Martino
Ra di Martino - No More Stars (Star Wars) #14, 2010 | Archival pigment print on Baryta paper | 40 x 40 cm 15 3/4 x 15 3/4 in edition of 5 plus 1 artist's proofs
Ra di Martino's No More Stars (Star Wars) depicts ruins of abandoned desert film sets in Tunisia and Morocco.
Whether the material ruins of a fictional future in No More Stars (Star Wars) or of a replica and dislocated Mecca in her untitled Morocco series, all aspects are considered through the lens of a filmmaker with only peripheral knowledge of photographic convention.
The effects are seen most noticeably in her choice of presentation. The No More Stars series have significant white space left beneath each print as if editors notes or subtitles for on screen dialogue might appear at any moment.
littlewhitehead
littlewhitehead -The Beef People, 2013 | Inkjet Print 277 x 270 cm 109 1/8 x 106 1/4 in
littlewhitehead - What are you doing?, 2013 | Inkjet Print 277 x 270 cm 109 1/8 x 106 1/4 in
Glaswegian artist duo littlewhitehead have extended their irreverent take on art production to include photography by enlarging holiday snaps of America taken from their families archive. The amateur nature of Our Pleasure adds to the authenticity of each found image - no matter how bizarre the content nothing is staged.
Without ever lifting a camera littlewhitehead create a photographic series with its own unconventional language that evokes a certain European nostalgia with regards to American culture.
Setareh Shahbazi
Setareh Shahbazi - Spectral Days #33, 2013 | Pigmented ink print 28 x 20 cm 11 1/8 x 7 7/8 in
Iranian Setareh Shahbazi’s starting point for her projects is photographs: family photos, film stills, postcards, magazine clippings and more. In her series Spectral Days Shahbazi revisits family photos she stumbled upon from her visit to Tehran in 2009, conjuring up memories of her family’s exile from Iran following the revolution.
With a healthy disregard for the sanctity of photography as a mirror of reality, she breaks down the images using digital manipulation. Blending, dissolving and over-painting the images to further decontextualize her subjects she engages our imagination in read infinite possible narratives.
David Rickard
David Rickard - Exhaust #3, 2011 | C-type print 100 x 75 cm 39 3/8 x 29 1/2 in
Born in New Zealand but based in London, David Rickard examines our relationship to space in architectural terms. With the work Exhaust, he tests his respiratory requirements on a space during one 24 hour period, capturing every outbreath without sleep or rest in large foil balloons.
Working in collaboration with photographer Manuel Vason, images were captured throughout the process, recording the totemic rise of 98 balloons as they accumulated. Here Rickard uses photography purely as an outsourced documentary record of a transitory performance.
Arthur Prior
British artist Arthur Prior has made several series of quasi-photographic images using his own customised scanning technology. While this unconventional approach to making images throws out many photographic compositional concerns his recent work Various incarnations of Shirley singles out and documents one core convention of the photographic tradition – the printers test trip.
Taking the original colour test strip model ‘Shirley’ as its starting point the artist’s book charts the history of the strips and the various models who came to be known collectively as the ‘Shirleys’. When compiled as a record the effects of feminism, globalization, racial equality, political correctness and technology are drawn out, in subtle and often humorous juxtapositions.
Darren Harvey-Regan
Darren Harvey Regan - Mass, 2013 | C-Print on archival paper | 100 x 80cm central panel, 90 x 35cm left and right panels
Born in Britain, Darren Harvey-Regan studied photography but works across disciplines to subvert, question and extend the conventions of photography and its relationship to representation and the physical world.
In Mass the simplest and most direct approach is favored in order to render the medium as transparent as possible. Presenting the image in this triptych form he draws not on photographic convention but on the tradition of icon painting. Enhanced by the title - which alludes as much to ceremony as the peculiar weight of the palm, which is its central focus, the artist manipulates representation and transports these objects into the realm of the profound.
Exhibition details
Date: On till 29th October 2014, Saturday - Thursday 10am - 6pm
Venue: Lawrie Shabibi, Unit 21, Al-Serkal Avenue, Al Quoz, Dubai (location map)
Phone: +9714 346 9906