 An international group exhibition of works which explore our relationship with images, The curator of the exhibition, Laura Simpson describes the project by saying: ‘the exhibition looks at what images mean to us personally and within society, how they reflect the past, present and future to us and their ability to comfort, inform and disturb us.’
This exhibition brings together a selection of meaningful and works which expose and draw attention to our relationships with images. The photographic image appears in several of the works taking slightly different forms; in Liu Wei and Matthew Wilkins’ video works the photograph features in singular or collective form as a representation of a personal or national archive. Where Wei uses a familiar and shocking image from the Tiananmen Square uprising, Wilkins draws on a sweep of family photographs and the lifeline embodied in them for ‘A series of Disappearances’.
Wilkins considers the following questions within his practice ‘How has the photographic medium changed the way we see our selves and the way we perceive such elemental things as time? How does the history of images inform our imagination and so influence the way we see things?’
Wei’s work ties more closely to a specific historic and current social approach to images. Based in China, much of his work deals with the denial and ignorance enabled by censorship of images. In ‘Unforgettable Memory’ the artist takes a well known image taken during the student uprising in 1989, of a man standing on front of a line of Chinese army tanks, to the University campus in Beijing. The people he asks to comment on it either do not seem to recognise the image or they do not want to speak about it.
Philip Braham’s work considers nature and our relationship with it. Braham’s photographs are part of a series ‘Suicide Notes’ in which he has noted the newspaper coverage of suicides within the landscape of Scotland and visited the sites to record a photograph of that place. The resulting scenes show a quietly energetic nature which is at once calming and foreboding. Braham is a lecturer and researcher at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design where the exhibition is being held.
Patricia Esquivias’ practice shows a dedication to and perhaps an obsession with the image. The video ‘Folklore II’ is an illustrated lecture to camera. The story is one of coincidences and connections binding two prominent figures in Spanish history together. Images of Julio Iglesias and King Phillip II of Spain (1527-1598) are linked through a series of other images ‘mixing historical facts about Phillip II’s reign and tabloid gossip about Iglesias and his private life, Esquivias takes us on an educational journey from the dark isolated Spain of Franco’s reign to the sun-drenched Spain of present day mass tourism.’ (Janice Guy at www.murrayguy.com)
Cooper Gallery, Dundee.
6 February – 6 March
Philip Braham, Eric Baudelaire, Patricia Esquivias,
John Isaacs, Wes Lang, Richard T Walker,
Liu Wei, Matthew Wilkins
Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, 13 Perth Road, Dundee, DD1 4HT
T: 0044 (0)1382 385330 E:
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W: www.exhibitions.dundee.ac.uk
Twitter: ExhibitionDJCAD
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