ShowStudio - Selling Sex

I went back to ShowStudio to see their new exhibition called Selling Sex. To read about their previous exhibition scroll down and read my post ShowStudio - In Your Face. ShowStudio is an amazing place and i would advise everyone to check it out and its free to enter! They always display interesting and unusual work, that in most galleries would not. The exhibition contains a mixture of pieces such as photography, film, painting, fashion, collage and even sex toys.

Selling Sex battles against how many images of women created by the media that are done by men, often using the female body to get out to wider audience. The prospective in this exhibition is changed by featuring all female artists, therefore examining an 'self-other' relationship and examining their unique relationships to sex and the female nude. The exhibition allows women a chance to get there work displayed without the ''male gaze''. only 8% of the work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art is created by women and at the the Tate’s female holdings amount to a only 15%. The imbalance doesn't only exist in fine art. But also in fashion, nearly all famous designers are male and major shots are done by top male photographers. Film women hold only 33% of all speaking roles and only 7% of all directors in Hollywood are women. And there remain only three industries in which women earn more money than men - pornography, prostitution and modelling.


ShowStudios aim is an exhibition made up of exclusively women artists looking at sex and nudity - examining a woman's version of a woman and asking how it differs from a man’s? Is an image of a nude woman empowered in the hand of a female artist? Does it resist traditionally constructed gender roles? Does it mock a voyeuristic male gaze?



The work I felt most draw towards was Porn sewn on Valentino Advert by Inge Jacobsen. Photography graduate Inge Jacobsen is a London based artist who takes found images and makes them her own through embroidering, cutting, and colleaguing.The images she uses are from women’s high fashion magazines and pornographic images found on the Internet. The reason I felt so draw towards this work is I have a personal passion for embroidery and collage, especially on photographic images.

"The Dailies" Exhibition by Thomas Demand

At the Sprüth Magers Gallery in London I recently saw the work of artist Thomas Demand. Thomas Demand is often known for making photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces. However for the exhibition the work that was displayed was different from his normal style. It is a collection of photographs that were studies everyday and mundane objects. Things you would often pass thinking nothing of it or in some case looking at it only as rubbish. Yet Thomas Demand almost forces the viewer to notice these day-to-day object that often go unnoticed and realise the beautiful in them.

In The Dailies, Demand for the first time experimented using an out of date process of printing called dye transfer, which involves fixing dyes with gelatin to ordinary paper. Very similar to technicolour, fixing each primary colour to the print paper one at a time. Demand chose to use this print process because its over saturated colour, however not garish effect. I found the style of print beautiful, it created an image depth not normally seen now a days, as well as an almost pop-art feel. While talking to one of the gallery staff, she informed me that this style of print process has actually stopped in production, meaning that no more of the gelatin fixing dyes are being made anymore. Meaning that is possible that Thomas Demand could have used up the last of the remaining supplies and these are the last photographs to ever be made in this process. Which I find weirdly upsetting as it make such rich and bold prints.

Double Exposure Photographs by Florian Imgrund and Dan Mountford

I have always found double exposure photography to be beautiful and very effective, however the works of Florian Imgrund and Dan Mountford really show the outstanding effect that double exposure can create. Two different artists I found through flickr, yet very similar, as they both merge portrait and landscape photography into single photos using double exposure.

German photographer Florian Imgrund got his first film camera in the summer of 2010 and has made incredibly good use of it since. All of his double exposure work is done completely in camera without the use of photoshop. Working mostly in black and white, he creates a dark and eerie feel in his photographs.

British photography and graphic design student Dan Mountford studies at Brighton University, England. The photos shown above are from his series called "The World Inside Us". Dan describes this series as “a visual journey through our minds by calm and tidy means which the reality of everyday life does not show.” He explores the use of double exposure in his photographs, successfully isolating parts of an image in camera with no help from Photoshop.

"To The River" Exhibition by Sophy Rickett

I went to the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol to see the work of Sophy Rickett. The piece I saw was 'To The River' a new video/sound installation, filmed during the spring equinox on the banks of the River Severn. The film focuses on a group of people a waiting for the Severn Bore to pass. The Severn Bore is a tidal surge that sweeps up the estuary of the River Severn during a certain time of the year, it is one of the largest in the world and many people come to see it. The piece investigates the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Sophy writes: ‘The project will explore issues that have resonance locally, and also globally. I am interested in ideas around politics and the environment, and also in the very demanding and teleological relationship humans have with the natural world. I am also interested in the Bore as a subject in itself, and equally in its ‘agency’ in broader philosophical and cultural terms.’

The film is projected on three different screens in the corners of a large dark room, each screen is edited to play different parts of the film at the same time. A recording is played in the room, a mixture of crowd talking and waiting for the wave to pass and the low rumbling of the River Severn in the background. The sound echos around the room, surrounding the viewer. You hear the crowd joke and banter, while trying to entertain themselves in the cold while they wait. For a long time the crowd suddenly fall silent while small waves pass, this silence seem endless in the dark and you feel the same anticipation as the crowd, until a women breaks the silence and the crowd being talking again.

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2011 Exhibition at National Portrait Gallery

I went to a exhibition at National Portrait Gallery to see the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize candidates and winning photograph. Many different photographers enter, both young new artists and established professionals hoping for the chance of winning and getting their work shown in one of the top gallery in the country. The work is picked anonymously and judged according to its photographic values.

One photographers work I liked was Olive Selling Dresses by Kenneth O Halloran. What I liked about the images is the angle of the camera, shot at a low eye level, something unusual when viewing a child. The tones work amazingly, the cold pale blue tones of the dresses on display in the background contrast well with Olive's Freckled warm skin tone and clothing. He found Olive at a boot sale, so I'm some way this is a form of candid street photography. He asked for her permission and her parents before talking the picture, and I think he did a wonderful job in capturing her.

Another artist work that captured my attention was Oliver by Kelvin Murray. The surreal qualities of the image is what drew my eyes towards it most, a young boy in a raincoat standing in a shower with a sad face. For me the whole pictures has a very depressing and defeated feeling with in it, as well as a feeling of silence. These feelings are heightened by the use of pale pastel tones and dull shadow. Something quite quirky and unexpected about this photographs is that Oliver actually won in a raffle to be photographed.

When looking at Micheal Britt's Photograph of actress Kiera Knightly I was quite sceptical at first. As I felt it was unfair to be entered as by using a famous person it put the rest or at least most of the other candidates in the competition at a disadvantage. As many of the viewers will connect much more easily because there is already fame around the sitting and it can be related to because she has been seen before. However this picture hung on a wall at the far back of the exhibition and was still already to capture my eye from far away. It really grabs your attention because it has a good composition, interesting colour palette and soft lighting. Something else quite refreshing about this picture is that it is unphotoshopped, strange to see a celebrity like this. Yet I feel it is this that makes the picture so powerful. Making her seem more human like everybody else, still able to get wrinkles. The simplicity is also beautiful, a simple head and shoulder shot, which allows you to really appreciate her beauty.

However the winner of the Taylor Wessing Prize was a disappointment, as well as the runners up. To be honest I felt quite sad when moving around the exhibition as I was surprised that this work is meant to be the top portrait photography being made in the country. But I felt like I was walking around a room full of mostly depressing people staring down the len of the camera. There was little excitement as all the picture where pretty much the same. The winner was a portrait of a young girl with a somber face holding a ginger guinea pig that matched her hair by photographer Jooney Woodward entitled Harriet and Gentleman Jack. A ginger child with animals won last year, giving the impression that if you wish to win enter a pretty ginger child with a cute fluffy animal.

"Monsters of the Id" Exhibition by David Cotterrell

I went to the John Hansard Gallery to see the work "Monsters of the Id" by David Cotterrell. The exhibition is a mixture of video, audio, interactive media and artificial intelligence a hybrid of modern technology. The work was specifically designed to display in the Hansard Gallery and the technology had never been used for display in a gallery before. The layout of the gallery was changed for the exhibition, even adding new rooms and walls. The exhibition captured the disorientation of a civilian observer within a militarised environment.

As you entered the exhibition you was presented "Observer Effect" a large visually curved barren landscapes, as you stood within the space, slowly dark unnerving figure would appear and walk towards you. The amount of figures that appeared depended on the number of people in the room, however while i was their only four figures appeared during my two hour stay but the work was still only in testing at this point.

Upon entering the second room you find the work "Searchlight 2". The information taken by the sensors in the previous room is translated onto a long desert landscape of "Searchlight 2". You see yourself projected onto this work as a small fleeing figure moving across this landspace. The work symbolises the way in with aerial drones pick up movement within war zones. The piece is made out of piled white chalk which cracks and shifts similar to that of desert sands, i found this fascinating as of the sheer amount of time it must have taken to complete. The work is quite chilling as it makes you feel so watched and small within a landscape.

"Apparent Horizon" is the third piece of work shown in the exhibition, it is displayed in to small rooms parallel to each other, you stand within the doorways and before you is shown two domed landscapes. Apparent Horizon shows our role hovers between sublime reverie and the quiet anxiety between of periods of violence. Final in a smaller back room has a set up room that shows the inside of a military field base. The piece places you in the centre of what would be the surveillance base in the war zone. The room contained authentic military equipment and allowed you to walk about it freely.