Reality Check
February 1 – 17, 2013
High House Gallery / 44AD artspace
7B Lower Bourough Walls, BA1 1QR, UK
This exhibition brings together a selection of exciting and award winning artists who distort the world on the other side of the lens within a wide variety of artistic strategies.
A photograph was once considered as a factual document – the camera being the window to the world, reproducing only what was present in front of the lens. The photographic images documented this truth, acted as purveyors of memory and were used as symbols of culture. The truth was, and is, far more complicated of course and in the post-modern world artists often use the camera not to show the truth but rather as one of the weapons in their armory to convey their preferred message… [DDET read more]
The formerly inviolable images are now distorted and manipulated – perhaps altered, cut, layered, collaged, appropriated, painted or stitched over; the scene portrayed may be enhanced, added to or entirely faked; the images may be part of a more extensive conceptual whole, alluding to other meanings, questioning accepted ideas or referring to social, cultural or internal worlds.
Jonny Briggs’ intensely personal work uses props and constructed sets to photograph his disguised self and family members. He questions the boundaries between us, between adult and child, love and resentment, expressed and reserved, real and fake in attempt to revive the unconditioned, uninhibited self.
Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska creates photo portraits of imaginary people – all physiognomies having been created by the artist in Photoshop. The works depict people, whose nonexistence is difficult to acknowledge, our own preconceptions and ideas quickly superimposed on their blank histories.
Minhong Pyo examines the interface between the real and imaginary both by constructing his own worlds or by taking enigmatic photographs of the real world. All images are then manipulated to further blur the boundaries of reality.
For more information, click here.[/DDET]
