CNS School - Conversation Pieces
Monday 3 July - Friday 14 July 2006 : 10am - 7pm
Free
An exhibition of photographs by the 'Photo-Group' at the CNS school in Norwich, tutored by artist David Gallant. The group explore their subjects beyond the obvious, looking for visual solutions that ask as many questions as they answer, and that challenge our conventional ideas about how we see life and the world around us. What are we hoping and looking for? And perhaps more ominously, what can we expect to find?
So where’s the conversation you might be asking – and there you are you’ve started it – fired the opening shot yourself! Because it’s the conversation between the image and the viewer that the CNS Photo-Group wanted to stimulate so, as you walk round, keep asking those awkward questions about the photographs in this exhibition.
In this, the second year of the CNS Photo-Group, Anya Agulova, Charlotte Henry, Stefan Hurst, Coral Innes, Kirstyn Middlemiss and their tutor David Gallant have been working together throughout the school year to develop style and technique. The group were challenged to produce images which went beyond the obvious and stimulated thought and interaction between audience and subject. Mostly abstract or near abstract, the photographs demand exploration and concentration to isolate the reality which gave rise to the printed image.
Light Speed by Stef Hurst
Perhaps the most accessible and yet the most complex conversation comes with Anya Agulova’s moving images of age; a three way conversation between a young photographer with her life opening up before her, her subject – whose living is etched in every line of her face and hands, and ourselves, the viewers whose own meditations on age are brought into sharp focus as we gaze into the pictures. Stefan Hurst has chosen large format prints to support his still movie of movement and landscape - a far cry from Anya’s meditative pictures. Kirstyn Middlemiss has also used the moving still image but in a completely different way, by showing the natural changes that surround us on a daily basis. By contrast, Charlotte Henry and Coral Innes have chosen traditional print methods that use interaction of natural and man-made objects to create beautiful compositions through abstraction and colour.
The challenge to go beyond the obvious has produced a variety and depth that marks out these young photographers as potential professionals.
Conversation Pieces runs in the Norwich Arts Centre Café Gallery until Friday 14th July, and is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm. Admission is free.
