West End Gallery Trip

The Photographers Gallery.

The first place we went to once we had arrived in the WEst End of London was The Photographers Gallery. When we arrived we had a talk from curator which was then followed by a tour of 2 of the floors in the gallery. The first floor we looked at was floor 5, John Lyon Gallery, the name of the exhibition being shown on this floor was "PERSPECTIVES ON COLLAGE". This exhibition is a group show that as the catalogue states "offers eight individual approaches to photo collage and aims to broaden ideas around te practice into areas including sculpture and instillation, as well as within the two dimensional plane of the photograph itself."

The works of Jan Svoboda, Peggy Franck, Nichole Wermers', Batia Suter, Anna Parkina, C,K Rajan, Roy Arden and Clunie Reid are featured within the show. 

Below are three examples of the works from the fifth floor. They are good examples of the different approaches to photo collage... 

C.K Rajan - Mild Terrors

The work of C.K Rajan, an Indian artist, shown in this show was made between 1992 and 1995. His practise has included not only photo collage but painting, drawing and sculpture too. The works are politically made usually overlaying two contrasting news paper or magazine images to create one simple image with a very strong meaning to it. The work respond "to the ways in which economic modernisation creates social and cultural contradictions."

When first viewed this series not knowing the concept behind the idea I had a completely different view of the collages. I think personally, knowing the idea behind them has made me look into the images more and think about them in a different way than I would of done originally. For this reason when I viewed the images a second time I liked them more than the first viewing.

Anna Parkina

A Russian born artist that works in sculpture, painting, photography and performance. Unlike the works of Rajan, Parkina's colleges are her own photography and are also layered more densely than just the 2 images he used. 

Her work reflects her move back to a post Soviet Russia after her studies at a time of big cultural and social changes.

Clunie Reid

Clunie Reid is a photographer from the UK. Within this collection she uses marker pen, stickers, holographic  paper and tape to recast photographic imagery into anarchic, new contexts. Personally, Reid's work wasn't all that appealing to me due to the fact I am not easily pushed into liking what I would see as more drawing based pieces. Despite the fact I don't find the work visually appealing I think the concept of challenging our perceptions of the worlds media such as web and advertising is something that is of interest to many and also a topic under scrutiny. 

The Photographers Gallery 18 January - 7th April 2013 catalogue
www.thephotographersgallery.org.uk/perspectives-on-collage-3