MA Photographic Studies 2011 University of Westminster

Sunday 18 September 2011

The Exhibition

Tom Need

David Kilian Beck

Alejandra Serrano

Javier Marquerie Thomas

Paula Gortázar

Matthew Fagg

Bethan Mills

Gosia Sobieszek

Clement Verger

Davide Maione

Tam Hare

Friday 2 September 2011

Common Space depicts the interiors of the European Parliament, an institution which, despite being little understood or liked by many citizens, is gaining a prominent role in legislating our everyday European living circumstances.

In its corridors, offices and meeting rooms, these quasi-futuristic spaces reveal a dream created in the fifties; a future whose ideals have been recently put into question after the serious economic recession suffered across the continent.

EU Parliament, Brussels, Paul-Henri Spaak Building, Room 03H01. © Paula Gortazar

EU Parliament, Strasbourg, Louise Weiss Building, Roof Terrace. © Paula Gortazar

EU Parliament, Brussels, Paul-Henri Spaak Building, Room 04B001. © Paula Gortazar

EU Parliament, Brussels, Altiero Spinelli Hall, Security Control Entrance. © Paula Gortazar

EU Parliament, Brussels, Altiero Spinelli Building, BIP office. 2011 © Paula Gortazar

Paula Gortázar's Biography

After completing a Law Degree in Madrid, Paula Gortázar moved to London to study photography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited in Spain and the UK and published in different international media. She has been recently shortlisted for the Julian Margaret Cameron Photography Award.

E-mail: paulagortazar@gmail.com

Web : www.paulagortazar.com

Thursday 1 September 2011

Introducing Deirdre King...

Photography

Every activity is specific. It has its own enigmas, expertise and history. It’s made up of questions and approaches, of attempts to resolve and comprehend, to complicate and restate.

From the installation "Photography" © Deirdre King

Deirdre King's Biography:

Deirdre King is a photographer, artist and critic based in London. She trained in visual art at Goldsmiths College and in digital photography at LCC. She has exhibited and curated in Britain and abroad; as a critic, she specialises in contemporary South Asian art.

E-mail: dkfr@btinternet.com

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Introducing Davide Maione...

To a Place I can’t Pronounce

A place that I can’t pronounce is the place that I want to be, a place that I can’t pronounce is the place where I am.

How did I get there? Was I drifting or did I fall asleep and miss my stop?

I can’t remember anymore. Sometimes I think that I really don’t know the place, whereas some other times I know it well. Either way I don’t really mind, as I didn’t pay for the ride. It was a journey, I still remember that; it was on a train of associations, and the persistent disillusion to be what I am not became my new obsession.

And again I found intelligence in little words,

To find what I've forgotten, you say,

For the idea of myself,

Shall not enfold me.*

And again I thought, what’s better than a photograph to exceed existence, to go beyond image

and the idea of you -as me.

* Claudio Galuzzi, La Pianura Dentro, 1993.

From the series "To a Place I can't Pronounce" © Davide Maione

Davide Maione's Biography

Davide Maione is a London based Italian photographer. After completing his BA in Photographic Arts at the University of Westminster, he worked for a few years as an assistant for fashion and still life photographers. Now, as a freelancer he undertakes commercial and editorial assignments. Davide’s research is informed by psychoanalysis as a critical theory for the understanding of contemporary visual culture and the relationship between film and photography. His work has been exhibited in the UK, Russia and Italy.

E-mail: davide@davidemaione.com

Website: http://davidemaione.com

Monday 29 August 2011

Introducing Alexandra Serrano...

Between Finger and Thumb

Between Finger and Thumb is an autobiographical and self-reflective piece of work that addresses the issue of memory within the context of the family and its domestic environment. For the purpose of this series, Serrano used the camera as a tool for the production and re-enactment of memories within the childhood home. To do so, she presents us with scenarios that put forward the playful conceptualism of still life, creating and arranging scenes that rely entirely on the symbolic value of objects as reminders of people, lost feelings and past events. While the project explores the complex mechanism of reconstructed memories, questioning the veracity of our own history, it also reflects upon the psychology of a space that is dear to all of us. A place that is also the theatre of more sinister matters as it shelters in its darkest recesses and forgotten margins the remnants of past conflicts and family dramas.

Alexandra Serrano's Biography

Alexandra Serrano is a French photographer. Recent First Class graduate, She holds a Ba (Hons) in Creative Advertising and Photography from the University of West London. Her work features in various online publications and has been exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions across London. Serrano was recently awarded an Honorable Mention in the Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3) 2011. She will also be part of the Intimate Space project organised by the Brazilian artist Georgia Creimer, for the 2012 Youth Olympic Games.

E: alexandra.serrano@hotmail.co.uk

W: http://alexandraserrano.com

Excerpt from Alexsandra Serrano's Dissertation

Discussing the ‘unhomely’ in Laurie Simmons’ work

In and Around the House 1977-78.

Figure 1: Woman/ Kitchen, 1978

In this materialization of domesticity and family identity, it is disturbing to see that the only protagonist is also an object herself, for she is no other than a doll. The doll is a normally inanimate object, but here the latter has come to life. A very uncanny and surreal impression which one may associate with Hoffman’s story The Sand-Man, in which the main character Nathaniel falls in love with Olimpia who is in fact an automaton created by the Sand-Man himself. The notion of automatic and mechanical processes is another disturbing aspect discussed by Freud in The Uncanny and which we also encounter in Simmons’ work through the doll’s explicit and grossly made articulations. But dolls are not only synonymous with unease and discomfort. In fact, they can also connote the very opposite. They arouse desire, for dolls are also idealized humans, they represent female perfection, eroticised and sexualised. This is even reflected linguistically when men speak familiarly of an attractive woman as ‘a real doll.’ In the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud discusses the meaning of playing with dolls. He explains that the latter is no other than a form of maternal identification. The young girl’s game of playing with dolls, Freud wrote, “ served as an identification with her mother with the intention of substituting activity for passivity. She was playing the part of her mother and the doll was herself ”. Therefore, in Laurie Simmons’ work, the doll would simultaneously represent herself and her mother for she, the doll, is playing the role of the mother. What does this say about Laurie Simmons’ perception of her own mother or more broadly, what does it teach us about the representation of women throughout the 1950’s? The space in which the latter is depicted is also very important, for the position she holds within the household is reflective of her social status. It is therefore interesting to point out that Simmons seems to place the doll predominantly within the kitchen as the latter appears twelve times within the series, thus being the most photographed space. Historically, with the exception of the 17^th Century Dutch home, the kitchen has always been regarded as a relatively unimportant space within the house. In Parisian bourgeois houses for example, the kitchen occupied a room off the courtyard but without direct access to the main rooms. In English terrace houses the kitchen, adjacent to the servant quarters, continued to be located in the basement until the 19^th Century. In that sense, the kitchen was often detached from the rest of the house, hidden and exclusively female. A highly connotative space which epitomises the traditional domestic division of labour. Therefore, by choosing a doll to stand as her female protagonist and by placing it in the kitchen, Simmons undeniably plays with the stereotypical and undermining representation of women as housewives. Although the 1950’s offered progressive gender equality due to the sudden introduction of women into the labour force during the Second World War, housekeeping and raising a family were still considered ideal female roles.

This very separation between female and male, private and public is very illustrative of the 18^th Century bourgeoisie from which this compartmentalization of society dates. As explained in 1892 by Jules Simon, a moderate republican: “a man’s vocation is to be a good citizen. A woman’s? To be a good wife and a good mother. One is some way called to the outside world, the other is retained for the interior”²¹ (my italics). This notion of containment, of social enclosure regarding women is very explicit in In and Around the House and, thus further reinforces the unhomeliness of Simmons’ interiors. As a result, the home is presented as a place in which the female inhabitant feels oppressed and unfulfilled. A sense of claustrophobia and restraint can be read through the pressurized placement of the female figure in shallow depth of field, thus making the room much smaller than it would appear. The latter is also visually confined both by lighting and composition. In that sense, the doll has become what Baudrillard refers to as a “sequestered object” that is, an object one sequesters so as to be the only one to enjoy it. An object that we hide from others, that we do not lend, for to lose it or for it to be damaged means castration. This sexually perverse behaviour is emphasized by the fact that the photograph is taken from above, giving the impression that the doll is being constantly looked at, or at least offered for sight.