A Retrospective / 1-16 December
Private View / Thursday 6 December 6.00-9.00pm

Jo Holland works on the borders between photography and painting, employing the techniques of both to create images that belong to neither medium. Holland makes photographs without the intermediary of either camera or negative, directly exposing the object through the lense onto what becomes a unique ilfochrome print. In this respect her work goes against the grain of much of contemporary photographic practice, which is dominated by the reproducibility of the medium and its digital manipulation. Focusing instead on the line between attraction and repulsion in the viewer’s response, the objects of Holland’s gaze include pig eyes, rotting pears, lamb hearts, sheep brains and, in her recent series the human placenta. Having dissected the object, Holland arranges the resulting cross-sections on a glass plate, onto which, in her more recent images, she intorduces glazes and blocks of colour, creating a hybrid form of image – making between photography and painting. Acquiring from this process the presence and aura of a unique work of art, the resulting images reveal a hidden, fleeting and often violent beauty where we least expect to find it.

The exhibition is Holland’s first retrospective, and a unique chance to see works from her fourteen years as a professional artist.

BODHI GALLERY
214 Brick Lane
London E1 6SA
Open daily 1.00-10.30pm

PREVIEW 21 NOVEMBER 2007 4PM – 8PM
Tim Smyth learned the power cars have the hard way-by going through the windscreen of one that was moving. As well as glass splinters, that accident, when he was out cycling, also imprinted musings on the destructiveness of the motor car.

Smyth has used this, and witnessing a car flip over into the fast lane of a motorway, as inspiration for photography of great beauty. Abstract images that seem at odds with the reality behind the image – the photographs are all details of the decaying shells of cars that have been involved in accidents. What happened in the accident? Was anyone injured or killed? The work doesn’t tell and Smyth doesn’t know so the work leaves the viewer wondering.

Smyth says:
“One morning I found this car at the end of my road that had been in a collision. It looked like an amazing still life: great material that transposed well photographically because of the amount of layers that you get within the reflections, the paintwork and the metal underneath.”
“Because I didn’t do anything to the cars myself, the process of creating the pictures involved really inspecting them”

Tim’s work was awarded Hotshoe Magazine’s student award 2007. In the accompanying article Sophie Wright described what it was that impressed Hotshoe so much:
“The surfaces barely recognisable as bumper or bonnet, transform into a glacial landscape, satellite images of continents, or canvas scoured by strange calligraphy.
“Corrosion is the final layer in Smyth’s photographs: a gradual reclaiming by nature of man-made technology.
“Although the end result seems abstracted, the intention is still documentary.
“His influences are all documentary photographers whose work sits comfortably in an art context: From Henri-Cartier Bresson to Wolfgang Tillmans, Juergen Teller and Stephen Gill”

Tim Smyth’s exhibition “The Nature of Machines” is the first exhibition for Rathbone Gallery. Sam Green of Rathbone says:
“We are very pleased that Tim Smyth chose Rathbone to exhibit these beautiful works. The underlying tension seems to reveal itself the more you look at them and they fit in perfectly with Rathbone’s desire to bring the best of contemporary photography along with the best, and most interesting, of the past.”

The opening for Tim Smyth’s “The Nature of Machines” will be at Rathbone on 21 November 4 – 8pm and the exhibition will run until January 17 2008.

For further information/images please contact:
Sam Green
T: 020 7636 6699
M: 07967 688 406

November sees the book launch in both London and Oslo of ‘The Norwegian Way‘ Showcasing Jorn Tomter’s work and his five year study of the ‘Russ’ – a three week countrywide party held by graduating Norwegian 18 year olds. With writing from Karl Erik Haug of Carls Cars and commentator Erlend Loe discussing this “fascinatingly exhaustive, hedonistic celebration”.

London
Launch party and book signing 20th November 07
6:30 Onwards
Bar Kick
127 Shoreditch High Street
London E1 6JE
Nearest Tube: Old Street

jimcasper writes, “A remarkable exhibition of 150 vintage prints by Russian photographer Piotr Ostrup are on display 7 November to 2 December 2007 at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.This exhibition is not a strict documentary testimony or historical narrative. It is an exhibition of the art photography of one of the most important photographers of Russia during the first half of the XXth century. According to the curators: “The exhibition is composed of photographs made in a particular historical time in a particular geographical-historical-cultural space”: the Great October Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia, which was one of the most disruptive turning points of the XXth century.” Read more…

Source: lens culture photography weblog via digitalarte.co.uk