New Contemporaries

New Contemporaries is the leading UK organisation supporting emergent art practice from British Art Schools. Since 1949 New Contemporaries has consistently provided a critical platform for new and recent fine art graduates primarily by means of an annual, nationally touring exhibition. Independent of place and democratic to the core, New Contemporaries is open to all.

One of only two open exhibitions in the UK, participants are selected by a panel comprising influential art figures including curators, writers, and artists often who have themselves previously been a part of the New Contemporaries, and a rigorous process that considers the work within a broad cultural context. The selectors for 2012 are Cullinan Richards, Nairy Baghramian, and Rosalind Nashashibi.

It is great, I was aware of the BNC prior to meeting with the people behind it, by coming across it during the 2010 Liverpool Biennial in A Foundation. The following year I took note of artist Cornelia Baltes, mesmerised by her Photoworks I, which consisted of carefully composed photographs touching on painterly elements. The strong use of colour and shape was what truly drew me into her work.   

Untitled (Bird), Cornelia Baltes

This years exhibit will be held in a new space in Liverpool, one the BNC are currently working on to improve the impact of the work. As I said in a previous post, I will be lending a helping hand to the core team this year. Things are already appearing quite exciting!

A look at Photographer Kevin Kunishi

All photographs in this post are Kevin Kunishi’s who holds copyright to these images, you can view the rest of his work at his website here.

The grave of Benjamin Linden

I don’t remember what publication notified me of the work of Kevin Kunishi, it could of been Foam, it might have even been Vice, (in fact a google search reveals that it was Hey Hot Shot!). Now that I can recall, this photographer who studied History first 10 years prior to a MFA in Photography at San Francisco has certainly interested me a great deal. 

I begun looking at his project Los restos de la revolucion, a body of work that looks at his prolonged stay in the highlands of Northern Nicaragua, studying Sandinistas and their opposing Contra veterans.

His artist statement is as follows;

After receiving my undergraduate degree with an emphasis on U.S. foreign policy in Central America, I wanted to move beyond the broad recital of policy and ideology within textbooks and explore the personal experiences of individuals directly affected by those policies. This body of work was created between the years 2009 and 2011, during a prolonged stay in the highlands of Northern Nicaragua. These photographs are from a larger series consisting of portraits of Sandinistas and their opposing Contra veterans, as well as artifacts and landscapes significant to the civil war that took place in Nicaragua during the 1980s. In 1979, after over a decade of struggle, the socialist Sandinista movement in Nicaragua overthrew the dictator, Anastasio Somoza. The Sandinistas quickly began the work of applying their social and ideological values in the hopes of creating a better Nicaragua. Unfortunately, the United States government had other plans. In the cold war environment of the 1980s, the prospect of a socialist/communist government gaining a foothold in Central America was deemed unacceptable. The CIA began financing, arming and training a clandestine rebel insurgency to destabilize the government. These anti-Sandinista guerrillas became known as Contras. Between 1980 and 1990, Nicaragua became the battleground of conflicting political ideologies; the promise of a bright future was lost as the nation descended into civil war. Although these two sides held polarized political philosophies, their survivors are united by the burden of a war-torn history. As political ideology evolves, dilutes or disappears, the horrors of war endure.

• Kevin Kunishi 

This is just a few from Los Restos de la Revolucion the full work is here

The photographs that came from Los Restos de la Revolucion told a narrative of exactly what was going on there. Visually Kunishi uses photography as a tool and is not held back in any way, producing and combining moving portraits, focused still life’s, and beautiful landscapes. I was very captivated from viewing Los Restos de la Revolucion that I almost missed out on some of his other projects and his portraits.

The portrait of Carlos, only has one actual portrait photograph, and the other two are still life photographs. I find the way he has documented this is 100% effective. A portrait is also about where a person lives, and what a person owns and their interests. It is hard to capture all of that in one image, Kevin Kunishi composes the portrait of Carlos in between a what could the place where Carlos sleeps and a photograph of a hand-made boat imitation. 

It made me think about the way I have been laying my own work out, something that is just as important as the content of the image. You want it to be at its most effective stage, because of the lost ownership of the work once handed over to the audience.


Here is Kunishi's feature in Hey Hot Shot!  

In touch with nature... some what.

I have been shooting film...

  Cropped Field

High Weeds

White Blossom

Long Grass

Sundripped Path #2

Weekly Update #2

Walls 

I have been shooting recently, if just on the whim of attention or the things I have been actively seeking out, but I have been very interested in images of trees, plants, shrubs and other things sourced with nature.

Cherry Blossom, June, 2011

I came across a photograph I took in the early part of June last year of a pink blossom tree, full bloom. An image that I liked back then when I developed it and one I still enjoy looking at today. 

It was only when I begun to look at hanging plates that my attention moved on to wreathes and flowers in arrangements. But, really, what does it all mean? 

Hanging plates themselves hold this kitsch, increasing their value. These plates which originated in China, can be seen everywhere, from Europe to North America. They have purposes as ideal gifts, and for household decorations. The ones I am more interesting in though, are the ones that carry a motif, almost a moral motif. In themes of relationships, life morals, and so forth. 

These kitsch designs are interesting, there form and structure relates to the ideas of my work.

The plate as an object is surrounded by a golden edge, the first barrier. Within that is the second barrier, the wreath of flowers, and inside that are the some-what special words.

It was from this I begun noticing the involvement of nature with the portraits used in Walls. Now I have also been shooting portraits for a different series of work that looks at males in their own ephemeral landscape that has been on going for over a year Liam #1, June 2011 and Carter, 2011. 

So I want to get out and photograph more images similar to Cherry Blossom, June 2011, and see how they look visually alongside my portrait work, as a trial. 

Liam #1, June, 2011

Carter, 2011

Around the same time I  was discussing work from Canadian photographer or more correctly artist Jeff Wall. In the past he has made images such as The Crooked Path, 1991. A photograph that is a study of human understanding in the simplest forms of how we read a landscape. How do we get from point A to point B?
Not to mention with my previous post looking at the work from Photographer Maureen Drennan, you can see now why I connect with her work so well. There are visual similarities that I enjoyed reading, the colours, the composition and the eye for detail. 

The Crooked Path, 1991, Jeff Wall

And so, these are some of the things I have found myself looking at, and being highly interested in, no matter how visually mundane they may appear. 

Forest, Dovestone, 2012

 Dried Stems, March, 2012

Tangled Shrubs, 2012

Finally I even have this image, which I haven’t scanned in correctly at the right size, or sorted the colour balance correctly, but I wanted to just be able to see if it had any qualities I wanted to keep. I suppose I like the variation within it.  

Untitled, Houldsworth, 2012

Untitled #2 Houldsworth, 2011

Weekly Update #1

Work

If you haven’t made a serious list with a good plan of action on the Sunday expect to have a slow start to the week, which is what I had on Monday. 

I had a brief list formed in my head, firstly I was to get some prints window mounted, and back with mount card to give them a more solid feel for portfolio purposes, secondly, decide which three images from Nick’s shoot to print on 20”x24” paper, and thirdly, prepare things for the fundraising events such as the Thursday night film screenings  and the portrait head shots for the ‘Manchester to London’ project.

None of this actually went to plan, marking Monday the start of the week a fail, fortunately Tuesday was the day I was able to get on to the main tasks. I managed to complete the prints of Nick, with them looking like this sat along side the ones of Monika.

I was given the go ahead create duplicates of the same large print once I had the right colour balance sorted out. I always create three prints there and then of one image just for future opportunities, saving me the time of having to get into the darkroom again, and waste paper getting it right all over again.

Just as the darkroom printing of the Monika prints was difficult so was Nick’s. Partly reason to why Monday failed for me, I underestimated the concentration required in printing something of this scale and tricky. 

Looking at these lined up together, they work quite well. Though they appear as a series of photographs here there is a real level of intimacy being revealed in each image. Chances are I will only be able to have a selected couple of prints up for an exhibition, however, looking at these if I had the opportunity to exhibit the whole project I would  grid them as the picture above, very Eija-Liisa Ahtila like. 

Daniel Meadows 

Wednesday, perhaps one of the most hectic days I have had to experience this year so far. It saw the arrival of a guest speaker, great documentary/portrait photographer Daniel Meadows, who's work now veers toward multimedia elements such as short digital stories.

Inspirational talker, and someone we can relate to as a former student of the Manchester School of Arts, which back in 1970 was called Manchester Polytechnic, ha.

The photographs here are all taken from Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s 

Untitled
June Street, Salford, February-April 1973

Brighton, Sussex. May 1974

Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria 1974

All pictures are copyright © Daniel Meadows except for the June Street, Salford which is copyright © Daniel Meadows and Martin Parr.

That day also saw me take the lead in photographing a keen student from the Royal Northern College of Music, who needed his portrait taken for an upcoming performance in the college. Due to the incredible (almost ridiculous) amount of people in and about the studio this week I had no choice but to do the shoot in the daylight studio. Which was a very odd set up for me as all the other shoots had taken place in the regular studio, not to mention, I had never used the daylight studio before! Getting the right white balance was the hardest part, however, in the end with the help of Luke and Martyn we managed to get this student what he wanted! In 30minutes!

Esko Männikkö

Esko Männikkö (b. 1959, Finland) has been nominted for his retrospective Cocktails 1990-2007 shown at Millesgarden, Stockholm, Sweden (1 September - 4 November 2007).

Born in the small town of Pudasjarvi in the northern part of Finland between the forests of Lapland and rural eastern Bothnia, Esko Männikkö documents the lives of those who inhabit the periphery. Initially a hunter, his passion developed from this to taking photographs in the early 1980’s. When Time Stops Still (1982), his first project, was a series of black and white portraits of a family continuing to survive without electricity on the outskirts of his village.

Männikkö then became widely known for The Female pike (!990-1995), which featured colour photographs of bachelors living isolated lives in the Finnish countryside - forestry workers, hunters, fishermen and the jobless - alongside still-life studies, panoramic landscapes and portraits. In this series, as well as the more recent work Mexas (1999), produced on the border between Mexico and Texas, his sitters are depicted in an informal manner within their personal domestic settings. Often surrounded by home-made objects, they are quiet and reserved, each photograph instilled with the peculiarities and unique characteristics of the individual,

Other projects include Organized Freedom (1999-2005), where Männikkö focuses in detail on the battered front doors and porches of abandoned country cottages marking their slow corrosion by the forces of nature. This melancholic but beautiful sense of deterioration returns in series such as Flora & Fauna (2002), and his most recent and ongoing series, Harmony Sisters (2005-), taken in farms and zoos around the world, where abstract photographs of animals are rendered as still-lifes.

Männikkö presents his photographs in assorted found or hand-made wooden frames, weather and aged by time, butted up closely together - his trademark style of exhibiting his work. The faded glamour of the frames acts as a stark contrast to the boldness and immediacy of his photographs but also lends them a timeless, almost painterly quality.

“I am a photographer of fish, dogs and old men”, Esko Männikkö once said. Interested in bringing to attention small stories which might carry a more universal poignancy, Männikkö shows us a world where animals, objects and people are all portrayed and treated with the same mutual respect and childlike wonder. 

In 1995, Esko Männikkö was awarded The Young Artist of the Year Award by Tampere Art Museum, Finland. His books have included Mexas - Esko Männikkö (1999), The Female Pike (2000, to be republished in 2008) and 100% Cashmere (2003). Solo exhibitions include Portikus, Frankurt am Main (1996); White Cube, London (19997); Kursaal, San Sebastian (2006) and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York (2006). His retrospective Cocktails 1990-2007 is currently touring across Europe. Esko Männikkö’s work is included in numerous museum collections. He lives and works in Oulu.

Extract taken from Deutsche Börse photography prize, Published London : Photographers' Gallery 2008

Photographs by Esko Männikkö, from the Deutsche Börse photography prize book, Published London : Photographers' Gallery 2008

JH Engström

My current obsession comes from the work of JH Engström. Engström, who was born in Sweden has brought to my attention through a discussion with a tutor, and since then I have slowly been working my way through his archive of work. 

I select these photographs to show you. There were loads more I wanted to select that have more of a direct link to me but I will probably do that later! These photographs however, come from the book From Back Home, 2009. It begins with this quote from Engström

Maybe you can’t really go back home.
But this is where I’m from.
These images pay homage,
to the people and landscapes that are my origins.
I’ve returned to something my body and emotions recognize.

The images are photographed in Värmland between 2001 and 2008.

JH Engström, 2009

Staggered across the book these photographs capture this moment, you can feel sentimental values in the facial expressions, I particularly like that they are shot in black and white (the book conveys both colour and black and white) which enforces this nostalgic feeling that Engström already has and it reaches the viewers. The subjects in the photographs who are slow dancing also embrace this theme of thinking back to a earlier period in their lives within their faces.

Photographs by JH Engstrom